By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
On the year anniversary of releasing its first-ever diversity report, the solar industry’s largest association – the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) – announced it is partnering with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Community Development Action Coalition (HBCU-CDAC) to improve the industry’s recruitment efforts in minority communities.
During Solar Power International last year, SEIA and The Solar Foundation released the findings from its diversity survey, a hard and honest look at where the industry stood in terms of reaching non-traditional solar audiences like blacks, Hispanics and other minority communities. It also looked at how the industry treats women – and discovered the answer to the question of how the industry treats women was “not that well.”
In fact, the group that performed least well in the survey were women of color – and that is one of the inequities SEIA is trying to solve.
SEIA and the HBCU-CDAC, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to begin a comprehensive effort to help the solar industry recruit and employ more students from the nation’s 101 Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This will include hosting a national jobs fair, individual jobs fairs at the HBCU schools and bringing solar companies to campuses for recruitment.
“Diversity and inclusion is one of our highest priorities and, while we’ve made progress, we still have a long way to go to make the solar industry more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities we serve,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO. “Those of us in solar joined this industry because we want to make the world better for all, which is why we’re excited to partner with CDAC, tap into the talent at HBCUs, and bring more of these students into our growing industry.”
I’ve been involved in diversity efforts in other industries, but never before have I seen an industry take such concrete steps to address the problems they found. I’m impressed with this first step, and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how this program works toward improving the diversity of this industry as it gets implemented.