Gujarat imprint on India’s 1st green job fair

Are you hunting for a green-collar job?  Here is some good news for you. Thanks to partnership between Gujarat-based Self Employed Women's Association (Sewa) and the India chapter of US-based grassroots environmental organisation, Sierra Club, will organise the first-ever green job fair giving young professionals a platform to find themselves a green-collar job. 

A green job, also called a green-collar job, is any job in an organisation that provides a product or service that allows consumers to consume less - either because of lower price or greater efficiency due to utilisation of the product or service. Both of these factors reduce usage of total energy and thus impact on the planet's environment.

Sewa and Sierra Club have partnered to come up with a Centre of Excellence to provide green livelihood. Talking to DNA on Saturday, executive director of Sierra Club, Carl Pope, who was in Ahmedabad to visit Sewa Trade Facilitation Centre in Saraspur, said that Sewa is won one of the three prizes that were given to the organisations for their work on green energy and green initiatives.

“The partnership shaped up while during informal discussion on what they would do with the prize money. Sewa came up with a perfect plan and I felt this is what we wanted to do here, which is why, we decided to partner Sewa,” said Pope.

Pope said that the first project in the partnership would be to organise a green job fair at Delhi in September as the concept is not very common in India.

Throwing light on the fair, Reema Nanavaty, director of Rural and Economic Development at Sewa said that with the fair, the partners would start procedures for setting up a platform where youngsters, green companies and NGOs can meet. “First of all, the centre of excellence would set benchmarks for 'green jobs'.

According to the norms they would approach companies, NGOs and corporate houses to check opening of green-collar jobs,” said Nanavaty, adding that Sewa is also going to invite vice chancellors of the different universities apart from different company officials to be a part of the green job fair.