Signature Initiatives
The Ares Foundation’s Signature Initiatives help expand access to quality green jobs as the world rapidly moves toward a more climate-resilient economy; strive to enable wealth-building opportunities for employees through ownership in the companies where they work; and aim to diversify the talent pipeline ready to enter the alternative investment management industry.4
Signature Initiative
Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow
On Earth Day 2022, the Ares Foundation launched Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (“CREST”), a five-year, $25 million initiative that aims to close the gap between the demand for a skilled workforce for green jobs and the number of people ready for these opportunities.
CREST seeks to help reduce economic inequity through scalable solutions that particularly prepare and reskill marginalized populations — especially women, people of color and people of low socioeconomic status — for professions in the growing green economy.
Executed with Jobs for the Future (“JFF”), World Resources Institute (“WRI”) and WRI India, the Ares Foundation’s grants to these organizations unite expertise in the future of work, sustainable development and equal opportunity. With efforts in the U.S. and India, these partners are working to develop green workforce solutions in concert with local communities, academic institutions, businesses and climate entrepreneurs.
Over the past year, CREST made notable progress toward readying and placing at least 25,000 individuals in quality green jobs in the U.S. and helping 1,000 micro, small and medium enterprise (“MSME”) workers in India’s automotive and textile sectors acquire and apply best practices in sustainability. The initiative also compelled meaningful dialogues in support of worker reskilling to better ensure equitable global supply chain practices.
Furthermore, the Ares Foundation showcased CREST in the global arena, including at the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (“COP28”) in a roundtable entitled “Skilling for the Green Future: Strategies to Close the Gap Between Employer Demand and Worker” and the Concordia United States Summit in a fireside chat entitled “A Blind Spot in the Green Economy.”
Regional Efforts for Green Workforce Needs
Last year, JFF launched its Quality Green Jobs Regional Challenge, comprised of three iterative phases — learning, planning and implementation — with a call for applications that garnered more than 100 submissions from 40 regions nationwide.
A blue-ribbon panel that included volunteers from Ares Infrastructure Opportunities team selected 20 regions that collectively formed a national learning community. JFF facilitated the community, seeking to deepen its understanding of regional needs, risks and opportunities at the intersection of climate and workforce development. Each region received $10,000 in support of its green workforce efforts, with the applications prioritized by geography, population diversity, and industry.
As a next step, JFF will select 10 of the regions to advance to the planning phase, which will provide each an additional $75,000 to advance their work. In fall 2024, winning regions will each receive $750,000 over three years to implement their quality green jobs agenda.
In total, the Quality Green Jobs Regional Challenge will deploy nearly $5 million to communities across the U.S.
Job Creation Through Entrepreneurship In complement to the Quality Green Jobs Regional Challenge, JFF launched its Climate Resilient Solutions Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program to support six entrepreneurs whose businesses intend to help revolutionize the green economy.
These innovators’ mission is twofold: 1) address the environmental challenges of climate change and 2) help eradicate systemic racial and socioeconomic inequities by creating quality green jobs for people of all backgrounds.
Together, these entrepreneurs’ solutions aim to help lay the groundwork for a more sustainable future, remove barriers that have long prevented marginalized groups from playing an active role in the green economy, and minimize gaps in income and financial well-being.
Reskilling Workers and Safeguarding Businesses
Following months-long research and analysis of climate-related vulnerabilities that may affect MSMEs and workers, WRI India identified two industries — the automotive industry in Chennai and the textile industry in Surat — as entry points for training MSME workers in sustainability best practices through its Resilient, Inclusive & Sustainable Enterprises (“RISE”) project.
RISE intends to help build MSMEs’ capacity to undertake recommended measures to strengthen their resilience to climate shocks while WRI India also assesses the decarbonization potential of MSMEs and their existing capacities as the organization reskills workers to adopt low-carbon interventions. Efforts are underway to reskill 1,000 MSME workers.
WRI India is developing training curricula in collaboration with the Government of India and trade association entities, including modules on the use of computer numerical control (“CNC”) machines that are becoming increasingly energy efficient thanks to reduce reliance on power and less water consumption.
Equitable Supply Chains to Protect Workers and Jobs
In addition to WRI India’s RISE initiative, WRI continues to examine much-needed strategies for investment in job training to help drive corporate sustainability targets. Through its Visibility, Opportunity, Input, Collaboration, Equity and Sustainability (“VOICES”) project, WRI is analyzing the ways in which large corporations’ expectations of small and medium enterprises (“SMEs”) to help them meet sustainability targets frequently overlooks the need to reskill SME workers to better achieve reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
VOICES strives to communicate the systemic challenges that SMEs and their workers face in meeting companies’ mandates to help lessen climate impacts. The fallout is especially acute when corporations cancel contracts with SMEs that fail to help meet their targets, causing people — and global supply chains — to suffer.
The project aims to reduce the exacerbated inequities between large and small companies in global supply chains, encourage equitable partnerships that boost bottom lines, and, of critical importance, reskill workers for a viable future in the growing green economy. WRI will publish an in-depth report on this work in 2024.
CREST Helps Address Barriers to an Inclusive and Equitable Economy and a Just Transition
Michael Arougheti, Director, President, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Ares and Chair of the Ares Foundation Board of Directors
A global approach is necessary to help close the skills gap so that millions of individuals can successfully enter green jobs and not risk being left behind in the transition to a lower-carbon economy.
Ashwini Hingne, Associate Director, Climate, WRI India
WRI India intends to reskill 1,000 MSME automotive and textile workers in Chennai and Surat, respectively, to help ensure that the transition to a lower-carbon society is just.
Eliot Metzger, Director, Sustainable Business & Innovation, WRI
SMEs in the global supply chain face unique challenges in supporting a just transition, including how best to position people as central to these efforts.
Sara Vander Zanden, Director, JFF
The effects of climate change differ by community, which is why JFF supports bold workforce solutions across the U.S. to help strengthen the green economy.
Meena Naik, Director, Skills First Design, JFF
CREST seeks to introduce new ideas that will help advance global efforts toward a just transition, including through JFF's research and publication of knowledge products.
Climate and Careers
In November 2023, WorkingNation, a strategic partner of the Ares Foundation, published Volume 1 of Climate and Careers, a multimedia, interactive magazine, to highlight the mission of CREST and the efforts undertaken to advance it. WorkingNation will release Volume 2 in 2024.
4. As used herein, “green jobs,” as defined by the International Labor Organization, refers to jobs that contribute to either preserve or restore the environment, be they in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and construction, or in new, emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.
