Stakeholder Interview Summaries Opportunity, Advancement, Innovation in Workforce Development (OAI, INC.) OAI, INC. is a social-services organization and provides skills training that leads to safe, meaningful employment with a focus on helping companies and communities thrive. OAI, INC. prioritizes communities affected by poverty or which lack necessary resources while uplifting companies facing challenges such as a declining labor pool. Additionally, OAI, INC. aims to serve people who may have language or cultural barriers towards participating in the workforce, including under or unemployed individuals, those who have been recently incarcerated or homeless, workers in need of building skills to do the job safely, undocumented workers, and others. OAI, INC. founded High Bridge, L3C, a social enterprise company specialized in landscape design, installation, and maintenance in the Chicago Southland area. With a mission centered around natural restoration and green infrastructure projects, the firm focuses on providing jobs for residents who live in economically depressed communities while also helping communities to capture and store rainfall on site and reduce flooding. High Bridge aims to promote climate resilience in communities while employing a local workforce to carry out these projects and further promote communities’ ability to drive their own work.
Delta Institute (Delta) Delta Institute is a nonprofit organization that works with communities across the Midwest to solve local environmental challenges. By integrating an approach focused on environmental, economic, and social goals, Delta aims to transform urban and rural places into thriving communities with thriving landscapes. Delta specializes in resiliency and community planning, brownfields and coal plan redevelopment, deconstruction and waste reduction, green infrastructure, and sustainable buildings. Delta has engaged in a diverse profile of various green infrastructure projects within the past several years. Currently, through funding provided by the Great Lakes Protection Fund (GLPF), Delta has partnered with the Water Finance Exchange, the Resilience Innovation Network, and municipalities to identify and remove barriers to implementing green infrastructure across the Great Lakes region. Delta has engaged with mid-sized municipalities in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin that are disproportionately vulnerable to flooding. Delta helps communities mitigate The Landscape of Green Infrastructure in Chicago
64
