Just as our summer guide listings went to the printer, we received this sad news:
Dear Friends,
We are at an exciting and pivotal moment in our history. The Obama administration’s focus on renewable energy coupled with the need to create jobs for the legions of newly unemployed has created an unprecedented increase in demand for the educational services that the Solar Living Institute provides.
We have seen a surge in interest over the past several months in both our renewable energy courses and our green career workshops and conferences. The recently passed stimulus package includes potential funding for the type of green jobs training that SLI has been providing for almost two decades. With the huge amount of opportunity we have before us we feel it is of paramount importance to step up and focus our attention on continuing to provide as much quality education as possible.
For this reason, we have made the difficult decision to cancel this year’s SolFest so that our staff can focus entirely on our educational mission.
We have many exciting projects and events in the works this year. We are working with an internationally renowned e-learning company towards swiftly expanding our renewable energy course offerings to include on-line distance education. We are executing our grant from a private foundation, and partnering with Solar Richmond to offer solar installation training to low-income folks in the Bay Area. And we are very excited to be working with the City of Ukiah to develop a green jobs training center in Ukiah. These projects and more to come will be demanding our best and we are very excited to be putting our efforts toward them.
We are tremendously energized about the opportunities we have before us and we hope you will join in our excitement about this momentous time for our organization, our country and our future.
We hope to have a party and fundraiser around SolFest time to celebrate our victories and gather the SLI tribe. We will revisit having SolFest in 2010. Stay tuned…
For the Earth,
The Solar Living Institute Staff
