Goodwill of North Georgia just kicked off The Goodwill Clean Tech Infrastructure Academy (CITA) on Monday, Jan. 29, an EV and green workforce development program in partnership with Accenture.

The Atlanta pilot program is set to run from Jan. 29 through Feb. 23. The first run has 30 participants across three cohorts. This is the first of three scheduled cohorts in the program. Two more are scheduled to begin in March and April, all lasting around four weeks.

Eventually, the aim is to train 200 people to work in the industry — specifically, maintenance of EV chargers, which continue to have a larger presence in Georgia.

Jenny Taylor, vice president of Career Services & Chief Mission Officer at Goodwill of North Georgia, has been part of trying to get this program off the ground from the beginning. She said this is the kind of work — beyond thrift shopping that Goodwill is synonymous with — that the organization excels at doing.

“One of the difficult things is that most people don’t really know what we do,” Taylor said. “They understand that we are synonymous with thrift stores, but all those very generous people who donate and shop, they don’t know where those dollars go.”

The program is also being implemented in other cities around the country, with Detroit having the same EV charging station technician program track as Atlanta.

The program is making an intentional effort to train unemployed people.

Trainees will make $15 an hour to begin, with a pay increase to $20 once they begin work post-training period.

Just as plumbers and electricians were skilled trades of the past, the clean energy transition is opening up new forms of needed, skilled work.

With a growing EV infrastructure, skilled professionals in maintaining these chargers are critical, and that is exactly why a program like this exists, Taylor said.

“They’ve been using electricians to install but also to maintain them as well. And there…