On Dec. 4, the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation (DBEDC) and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Massachusetts announced a new partnership to expand workforce training in the green jobs sector.

The Dorchester-based training hub will host its first 10-person cohort starting in February.

Specifically, the collaboration will build on LISC’s Bridges to Green Jobs Program by offering paid hands-on technical training, essential job skills training, and career connections in the clean energy field, including weatherization, HVAC, energy auditing, and solar.

“It’s a two-week training and we offer technical and soft skills, said Silvana Bastante Muñoz, who leads the LISC program, which started in 2022. “We offer financial coaching, we offer transitional coaching, and we also have client assistance funds to help mitigate barriers that we always end up identifying in people’s lives so that they can stay employed.”

Earlier this year, LISC moved to expand its program statewide with a focus on communities that have disproportionately been affected by climate change and are underrepresented in the green jobs sector.

In what Bastante Muñoz calls “a beautiful coincidence,” Dorchester Bay EDC reached out to LISC “because they were hoping to create their own kind of green jobs training.”

Carolina Leins-Sultan, the director of workforce development at Dorchester Bay EDC, said it was a “a good idea to partner because they were looking to scale their program and work with mission-aligned partners across environmental justice neighborhoods and gateway cities.”

She also noted that the green sector has “a lot of entry-level roles with fewer barriers to entry and pays higher than average entry-level wages and benefits.”

Bastante Muñoz agreed. “The [goal] is really just to get people employed in these jobs because there is a lot of demand and high-income earning potential,” she said. “The long-term vision of this is to actually get people to do work in their own neighborhoods.”

The program, which has already been launched in Lawrence, will expand into New Bedford later this year and then into Springfield in the spring of 2026.

“These communities have been excluded historically and institutionally from not just job opportunities but long-term economic opportunities from this sector,” said Bastante Muñoz. “Collectively we can reach those climate action goals and start bridging those wage gaps and economic opportunity gaps that have existed for so long.”

Added Liens-sultan, “We know that these jobs are essential to the functioning of our city now and in the future and they’re projected to grow significantly.”

The next cohort, led by technical trainer Jason Taylor, will take place in Dorchester from Feb. 3 to Feb. 14. The deadline to apply is Jan. 20. Applicants must be 18 years or older, have a valid driver’s license and reliable transportation, and must be authorized to work in the US.

A link to apply for the program is here.