The East Bay Community Foundation, headquartered in downtown Oakland, brought together more than 75 people last week in an effort to introduce venture capital investors and other business leaders to key organizations that are working to shift the area to a green economy.

The gathering marked the latest move by community groups and civic leaders in Northern California's East Bay area to further their drive to make the region a national model for green job development as a bridge to economic recovery.

The foundation's goal in hosting the session is to help foster an environment for private and public sector partnerships to make that transformation possible, said John M. Pachtner, the foundation's managing director of communications.

Taking center stage at the business briefing were groups and civic leaders who helped establish Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a coalition of social justice, environmental and other community organizations, trade unions, private companies and the city of Oakland.

The idea behind the corps is to "put people who need work most at the front of the line to do the work that needs to be done most," said Jakadi Imani, the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which played a leading role in co-founding the corps.

Although the economy appears to be in "free fall," Imani said, there is hope in the president-elect and the incoming administration. "We have the opportunity now," he said, "with a president who is talking about renewable energy and who's also talking about putting people back to work."

The means for training those workers is available through the corps, said Imani and Art Shanks, the executive director of Cypress Mandela Training Center, Inc. The training center, a core element of the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, is a 4-year-old nonprofit whose pre-apprenticeship construction work training program grew out of efforts to rebuild Oakland after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.  

The 16-week, intensive training program has helped men and women from some of the toughest urban neighborhoods in the country successfully prepare for some of the toughest jobs for skilled workers, according to Shanks, whose presentation included video clips from a local news program about the center.

The Oakland Green Jobs Corps launched in October with much fanfare. The business briefing offered by the East Bay Community Foundation was the foundation's fourth session of the year and the first to be held since the job corps was established.

Elected officials who helped boost the jobs corps also spoke at the briefing.

The goal, said Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, is to "take people who have been left behind by all other trains -- and train them, not for obsolescence, but for the future."

U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, the new head of the Congressional Black Caucus and a leading supporter of green jobs and social justice and equity measures, pledged that she would work to include the Oakland Green Jobs Corps in any economic recovery or stimulus package.

"I think we're going to see, under President Obama, doing business in a different way (with) green transportation, green jobs and green energy and with Oakland as a national model," said the Oakland Democrat.