Baton Rouge, La., Local 995 can now play a leading recovery role in a state all too familiar with natural disasters, thanks to IBEW innovation and outreach to strengthen ties in the community.

Working with civic and faith leaders, Local 995 has made its apprenticeship and training center into a “Community Lighthouse” — making it available to residents as an emergency electrical hub during a widespread power outage. They’ll be able to do everything from charging their wireless phones to storing medicines that require refrigeration.

It will also serve as a hub for emergency crews as they work to restore power, which would include IBEW-represented lineworkers. Electrical training would continue at the center during an emergency.

The concept was made possible by a solar and battery storage microgrid that Local 995 built at the training center. It hopes to build about 20 more microgrids in and around Baton Rouge, the state capital with a population of about 225,000, with a goal of each resident being able to get to one in 10 to 15 minutes.

“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Local 995 Training Director Darryl McGaha said. “Just to show off the work we can do and to demonstrate how we feel about the community and the way we train.”

Local 995 held an open house at the facility in early March, drawing substantial local media coverage. It has helped build a bridge between the IBEW, labor and the Louisiana faith community — not an easy thing to do in the Deep South, perhaps the most anti-union area in the country.

That creates trust and is good business, Business Manager Jason Dedon said. Local 995’s signatory contractors already have added two projects due to the improved relationship.

“In a lot of ways, the only way they [the faith community] knew about us was through movies and television shows,” Dedon said. “They never had any real interactions with us.

“This has created a space to sit in a room with all the lay leaders in the area, in all the faiths and denominations, and really bond on the things we have in common,” he added. “There is a lot that unites us.”

If a religious leader talks about the importance of unions, his or her congregation members are more likely to support the message instead of relying on someone from the outside who might have an anti-union agenda, Dedon said.

The Pew Research Center used a statistical analysis to rank Louisiana as the third-most religious state in the country, tied with South Dakota and trailing only Mississippi and South Carolina. Leaders from several faiths and denominations took part in the Lighthouse’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“We’re creating a community of religious leaders as ambassadors in the fight for organized labor,” Dedon said. “It’s easy for someone to tell me no. But tell your priest no? Look him in the eyes and tell him that? That’s a different deal.”

Local 995 has met a massive need in the community with the Lighthouse, with half of the funding coming from East Baton Rouge Parish. (Parishes in Louisiana are the equivalent of counties.) The rest came from federal funds and a statewide coalition of more than 250 congregations and civic organizations.

McGaha noted that the facility was a Grainger industrial supply house before Local 995 purchased it several years ago and converted it into a training center.

That and its location near the city’s center makes it an ideal spot for an electrical hub, he said. Construction on the microgrid took place from October 2025 until January. It required Local 995 to upgrade the building overall, such as installing a new roof, which was performed by a union roofing company.

It’s also allowed Local 995 to expand its apprenticeship classes into less traditional sources of energy workers, McGaha said.

“it’s not only been a success for the Community Lighthouse but a success for our apprenticeship,” he said. “We’ve been able to get people in here who had no idea what we do or how we operate. It’s opened a lot of doors.”

Among those people are representatives from Together Baton Rouge, which organized the open house.

The group is a nonpartisan coalition of congregations and community organizations that brings groups together to work on issues in the city without regard to race, religion or political affiliation.

Lead Organizer Abel Thompson noted that 34 people died after Hurricane Ida struck New Orleans in 2021 because they had no access to electricity due to blackouts that lasted for several days.

Having a Lighthouse available within a close distance prevents such tragedies, he said.

“We can’t rely on standard or traditional disaster response,” Thompson said. “Not because it’s particularly dysfunctional, but because when you lose all power, no system is built for that.”

Having the Lighthouse available allows the community to better identify who might need help before a hurricane or tornado hits, said Thompson, who was working on the ground in New Orleans when Ida struck the city. It was the second-most destructive hurricane in Louisiana history, trailing only Katrina in 2005.

“To have the IBEW be part of this brings so much capacity to what we’re doing,” he added. “It’s not only a resilient dynamic. They also represent so many electricians throughout the state. First responders come to them during an emergency.”

New Orleans-based Community Power South, which pairs nonprofit groups with renewable energy projects, also assisted with the project.

“Storms aren’t going to stop wreaking havoc,” CEO Joshua Cox told Baton Rouge television station WBAF. “The grid isn’t going to stop going out. And we need to have the tools to be able to take care of ourselves until it all comes back up.”

Another benefit for Local 995: a massive slashing of electrical costs at the training center.

A recent utility bill was about 80% less than in a similar period last year, Dedon said.

“We’re running our apprenticeship programs on a shoestring budget, trying to stretch every dollar as far as we can get it,” he said. “That’s real savings that we can spend on laptops and other materials.”