The Last Frontier Eco Alliance Promotes Environmental Education and Green Jobs in Rural Alaska

J.T. Hessert recently reached out to Tree Media and 11th Hour Action to tell us about his organization, The Last Frontier Eco Alliance and all the great work they are doing to promote environmental awareness and leadership.

J.T. writes:

The Last Frontier Eco Alliance is an Alaskan-based environmental justice solutions organization founded by J.T. Hessert to promote the development of a clean energy economy that works for all parties across the socio-economic spectrum. The organization is driven to unleash the power of media as a tool for social change and to build sustainable programs that link raising awareness with results-oriented action.

Our flagship initiative The Yukon River Media Project / Alaska Green is designed to philanthropically connect the worlds elite social and environmental justice film production organizations with rural communities along the Yukon River and other river systems in the far north.  We travel down these wilderness rivers by human power and give presentations in the schools about global warming, social activism, green jobs and the need for a clean energy economy.  Than we work with top film producers @ the global level to provide them with an opportunity to donate their most powerful and inspirational films to our contacts in these communities so that educators / tribal leaders can incoporate them into the classroom curiculum to be used as an educational tool to expand the horizons of youth.

Our long term goal is to build a series of annual events for all our major cities, but currently we are focused on one primary Alaska Green Anchorage event (with a tentative date of the week of Earth Day, which is April 22). We want to link raising awareness with ACTION, action that will get tangible results... Our goal for this event is to host a 'carrotmob' campaign, screen the seven donated films in a film-festival format, engage local artists for entertainment, bring in a keynote Green Jobs speaker and facilitate a dynamic live green jobs forum with public officials. And to raise money that could be used for seed funds for a workforce development program which will give low-income @ risk young people here in Anchorage jobs retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency etc., building a clean energy economy.

We are designing this Green Job Corp "pathway out of poverty" program with assistance of resources from Green For All.  Our goal is to provide people who have barriers to employment / education in their late teens to early twenties in Anchorage with jobs in the fields of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

We envision a program that will provide these young people with soft skills like leadership and communication in addition to technical skills, and we intend to work with established education providers to build a two-tiered reward-system into the program where if a person works their way up to a management / supervisor role they will subsequently have access to education which will provide them with an opportunity to become in involved in a) cutting edge alternative energy technology research/ development b) arts education programs.

Our vision is finish our trip down the yukon river this spring/ early summer and travel down another major Alaskan wilderness river system this summer, and each summer after that, annually distributing a few new films to our growing network.  We hope to build this event into a 2010 4 city event schedule, which will supply Green Job Corp "pathway out of poverty" workforce development programs in all our 4 major urban centers in the far north with a sustainable funding stream.

If you would like to learn more or lend your support please contact J.T. Hessert at jthessertracing@yahoo.com