Pre-apprenticeship program trains new Mainers for jobs in renewable energy

SOUTH PORTLAND — Pierre Dende, an asylum seeker who lives in Portland, hopes to take advantage of industry demand for workers in renewable energy by training for a job in the solar industry. The 38-year-old electronics engineer arrived in the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2021. He has worked in information technology in the airline industry and was a desktop technician at LL Bean in Freeport. He’s currently unemployed, he said. On Tuesday, Dende was among a group of 10 men being trained by ReVision...