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The Corps Network and Partners Host Congressional Briefing on Postsecondary Success Strategies for Opportunity Youth

The Corps Network and its partners Jobs For The Future, National Youth Employment Coalition, YouthBuild USA, Brandeis University, and Miami-Dade College held a congressional briefing on Postsecondary Success Strategies for Opportunity Youth on Wednesday. This session provided a setting to share the success, design, and implementation of the Post Secondary Success Education Initiative (PSEI), which was completed in 2013.

The PSEI was created in 2009 to help connect Opportunity Youth to college and postsecondary education. The Corps Network joined the initiative in 2012. Using the “Back on Track” model, this initiative funded national youth development organizations and community-based organizations that would make it possible for disconnected youth to acquire a high school diploma or GED and necessary academic skills to make the transition and complete their postsecondary education or training. Taking place in Brooklyn, New York; Waukegan, Illinois; Miami, Florida; Oakland, California; and San Rafael, California, this initiative had participant success rates of 55% enrolled in postsecondary education with a 74% rate of persistence through 2+ semester (data from The Corps Network). More information about PSEI can be found here.

Speakers at Wednesday’s panel spoke about the design of Postsecondary Success Strategies, how to best implement them, and how federal policy intersects these issues. Speakers included Terry Grobe (Jobs for the Future), Alan Melchior (Brandeis University), Scott Emerick (YouthBuild USA), Mala Thakur (National Youth Employment Coalition), Capri St. Vil (The Corps Network), H. Leigh Toney (Miami-Dade College), Alex Nock (Penn Hill Group) and Jennifer Brown Lerner (American Youth Policy Forum). Tyler Wilson, Director of Government Relations for The Corps Network, moderated the briefing.

Panelists spoke about the success of the initiative, citing the partnership between Community Based Organizations and youth development organizations as a fundamental element of the program. PSEI “brings together community organizations who serve the same people but haven’t talked to each other” said Alan Melchior, Associate Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Youth & Communities at Brandeis University. “This partnership goes two ways, strengthening both partners and cultivating a ‘college-going’ culture in our communities” said Mala Thakur, Executive Director of National Youth Employment Coalition.

At a federal policy level, postsecondary success (PSS) closely ties into the themes of innovation, partnerships, college/career readiness, and increased college access and persistence, which are priorities in the development of the Higher Education Act reauthorization. PSS bridges the gap between a high school diploma/GED and postsecondary opportunities, while helping to ensure persistence through the difficult first year. “An end goal for the administration is career advancement so there is a focus on college and career readiness. Programs [such as PSEI] are now savvy about documenting what works and their successes so we are now ready for policy discussions” said Jennifer Brown Lerner, Deputy Director at American Youth Policy Forum.

The early data for PSS is promising and points to an effective model for re-engaging Opportunity Youth in education and the workforce. We would like to thank the Open Society Foundations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their generous support of PSS. We would also like to thank all panelists for their contributions to the briefing and support in Postsecondary Success Strategies.

Crews from Conservation Corps Minnesota Break Up Jay Cooke State Park Logjam Created by 2012 Flood

Article, written by John Myers, appears in the Pioneer Press. Published July 10, 2014.

JAY COOKE STATE PARK, Minn. — There were no bulldozers or backhoes here, along the rocky banks of the St. Louis River, just a few chain saws, picks and pitchforks.

And lots of muscle power.

Crews from Conservation Corps Minnesota were busy Wednesday tearing down a literal logjam that settled during the great flood of June 2012.

Hundreds of tons of debris plugged a channel along the river, creating not just a blockage for the water but also a safety concern for park visitors.

Park staff members have been removing garbage and other flotsam from the scene for two years. But only this year did they get the crews needed to start on the huge pile of tree trunks, limbs and branches that covered what had been a popular photo-snapping spot just across the famous swinging bridge near the park’s headquarters.

“The debris was stacked above the rocks, maybe 15, 20 feet high. We’ve been working on it since May, and steady for the last week or so,” said Mitch Pauly of Superior, a Minnesota State Parks building and grounds crew worker. “It’s slow going… But having the Conservation Corps crews here has really helped. This is the kind of work where we can’t get big machines in here. So we need bodies to dig in and get dirty.”

That’s exactly what adult and youth Conservation Corps crew members were doing Wednesday: sawing and hauling logs and limbs up to a four-wheel utility vehicle that brought them to a dumping spot. The wood is being used to fill-in where the 20102 flood caused a landslide at another location in the park.

Most of the adult crew members are full-time, yearlong positions. Funding comes for the federal AmeriCorps program and from fees paid by the state, county, local, federal or private property manager where the crews perform their work. Trail associations and “friends of” groups are frequent employers of corps crews, as are state parks.

“A lot of us are in outdoor and conservation fields, but not everybody. We have an art major who wasn’t sure what she was doing and so is spending the year doing this,” said Josh Andreska, an adult crew leader and geology/environmental science graduate of the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. “It’s a lot of work. But it’s a good foot in the door for natural resource jobs.”

Conservation Corps members are trained to build all sorts of recreation trails and foot bridges, clear invasive species, trim trees, clean campgrounds and respond to a list of natural disasters including wildfires, floods and even hurricanes. Already this summer, Conservation Corps Minnesota crews have responded to floods and other disasters, including efforts in recent weeks to protect homes and lodges along Lake Kabetogama.

This year, there are 31, five-person adult field crews working across the state. But they also have been as far away as Alaska in recent years.

“We had crews out helping right away after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. We have a schedule full of natural resource jobs lined up, but the understanding is that, if a disaster hits, our crews are ready to go,” said Connie Lanphear, communications director for the corps. “Usually they are pulled off to help fight forest fires. But this year it’s been more floods than fires.”

Conservation Corps Minnesota has roots back to the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided natural resource jobs to unemployed young men so they could support their families during the Great Depression. In the 1970s the federal government launched the Youth Conservation Corps and the year-round Young Adult Conservation Corps. When funding for those ended in 1981, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources took over the effort, creating the Minnesota Conservation Corps.

In 1999, the Friends of the Minnesota Conservation Corps was incorporated as a private, nonprofit that took over the Minnesota Conservation Corps in 2003. The name changed to Conservation Corps Minnesota in 2010. The effort provides outdoor work for about 550 teens and young adults each year.

The six-person youth crews involve four-week stints that pay high schoolers $200 per week (and free food) to camp in the outdoors and travel to wild places in the state that many of them had never seen before. In addition to the debris pile, two youth crews also have helped move rip-rap boulders at Jay Cooke to buttress a new hiking trail bridge. They also have worked in the Gilbert ATV park as well as St. Croix and Banning State Parks.

Many of the youth participants have never been camping, never been to a state park, and some have never been out of their city, Lanphear noted. Many also have never had a hard-work job. Many of them end up bringing family back to show off the work they had accomplished.

“You gain a lot of confidence in what you can do. But I think the big thing is the sense of community you build with each other,” said Jonathan Goldenberg, a youth crew leader. Participants develop “the sense that, when people work together, you can get a lot more done.”

CONSERVATION CORPS MINNESOTA

For more information on how to join Conservation Corps Minnesota, or to hire a crew for a natural resource or recreation project, go to www.conservationcorps.org.

[VIDEO] Civic Works Transforms Old Lot into Garden, Memorial for Colored School 115

Article, written by Danae King, appears in The Baltimore Sun. Published July 8, 2014.

At 90 years old, Betty Williams’ clearest memory of her days at Colored School 115 is running through an alley the schoolchildren thought was haunted.

“It was a game to run through and not get caught,” she said, describing the lane between two of the old school’s buildings.

Williams attended grades one through six at the school, built in 1888 in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood, from 1929 to 1935. It was declared unfit for children in the 1920s but continued in use because of “the feeling that black children weren’t deserving of anything better,” said historian JoAnn Robinson. The school was torn down in the 1950s, after the U.S. Supreme Court‘s Brown v. Board of Education ruling forbade school segregation.

On Monday night, about 50 community members gathered for the opening of Schoolhouse Garden, which now commemorates the space where Williams’ school used to be, at Brentwood Avenue and Merryman Lane.

The space was transformed from a rubble- and trash-filled lot to a garden with silhouettes of children and teachers, hydrangeas, fruit trees, mulch and paving stones.

The garden is an “homage” to the first colored school in Baltimore, said Waverly Main Street Executive Director Jermaine Johnson. “It keeps history alive so young people coming along know where their grandparents and great-grandparents came from and how well they did despite hardships,” said City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke. “Instead of looking at a littered lot, you’re looking at a legacy.”

Williams, who grew up to be a teacher and retired in 1982 as principal at Eastern High School, is one of many notable alumni and teachers, said Robinson, a retired history professor at Morgan State University. “Imagine the feats of intellect, imagination and devotion these teachers must have performed to overcome these surroundings,” Robinson said, referring to the ramshackle buildings, outdoor toilets and potbellied stoves the teachers had to tend.

Though the three buildings were called the “chicken coop” by students who attended, Williams said she loved going to school and that the experience was not at all unpleasant for her.“

For two years, Waverly Main Street, a commercial revitalization organization in the area, and Civic Works, a nonprofit that transforms vacant lots around the city, have been working on the property.

Located in a high-traffic area across from the Waverly Farmers’ Market, it had become an eyesore, but there was a “deep community interest” in it, said Civic Works COO Earl Millett.

“There was always an idea to do a garden in that area,” Johnson said, but the idea for a memorial garden was proposed by local historians.

The renovation cost more than $22,000, with funding from the community, alumni of the school and a state grant, Johnson said.

Johnson hopes the public uses the garden, and that the nearby Waverly branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library keeps with the educational theme and hosts reading programs there. Waverly Main Street has programs planned for fall, including a fundraiser to help sustain the garden. “If you allow a vacant lot to go down, it causes people to not fix up buildings,” Millett said. “It’s a keystone to that area, a lot easier way to get [revitalization] going, it’s contagious.”

Millett said people owning surrounding buildings have already begun to fix them up, which he credited to the garden project.

Los Angeles Conservation Corps Recognizes Executive Director Emeritus Bruce Saito

Story appears on LACC Facebook page.

At last month’s graduation, special recognition was given to Bruce Saito, our Executive Director Emeritus, for his founding contributions and continual support in making high school diplomas a reality for 1,660 corpsmembers to date. From the beginning, Bruce has helped pioneer our work-school system that is now widely used across many conservation corps around the country. In his honor, the Adult Corps High School Campus has been renamed to Saito High School. Thank you Bruce for your dedication to LA’s youth!

Northwest Youth Corps Crew honored at Sandy Ridge BLM Celebration

Article appears on Northwest Youth Corps website.

On July 8th, the US Bureau of Land Management Leadership Team held a press conference at the Sandy Ridge Trailhead to celebrate the impact of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF funds helped fund the removal of a dam, restore the Sandy watershed, and create the Sandy Ridge Trail system, which has become known as a world class mountain bike destination, which sees over 120,000 visitors per year. Partners in this effort include the Bureau of Land Management, Western Rivers Conservancy, International Mountain Bike Association, Northwest Youth Corps, Clackamas County, and Ant Farm Youth Corps. Pictured is the Blue crew with BLM Leaders, including Neil Kornze – BLM Director and Jerry Perez – OR/WA BLM Director. Northwest Youth Corps has been working on the Sandy Ridge project since 2009.

Internships Are A Good Way To Become A Park Ranger

Article, written by Zack Ponce, appears in the Current-Argus News. Published June 27, 2014.

Ever wonder how to pursue a career as a park ranger?

Although park rangers come from many different educational backgrounds, the journey to earn the coveted brown hat and shiny badge is arduous. Many jobs within the National Park Service are seasonal and it takes a lot of grit and dedication to continue the journey toward full-time employment.

The obstacles have not scared away one young man, who after traveling the world, has found that Southeastern New Mexico may just be the perfect place to chase a dream. Mike Gallant, an avid outdoorsman, applied for the Student Conservation Association (SCA) summer internship program with the National Park Service last year after spending nine months as a volunteer high school teacher in the South Pacific and has been working at Carlsbad Caverns ever since.

Gallant works in the education department at the Carlsbad Caverns and has helped out with many of the summer programs the national park hosts. The 23-year-old said the program so far has provided him with invaluable experience.

“If you want to get into working with public lands in the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, or just working outdoors in general, the SCA is a really great opportunity,” Gallant said. “It’s a great way to start your career, gain some experience, and make some connections and move forward from there.”

Gallant grew up in New Hampshire where he enjoyed hiking in the surrounding mountain ranges. He majored in geology and was looking for a way to parlay his passion into a career when he learned about the SCA through a friend.

“Getting outdoors has always been a big part of my life,” Gallant said. “I did a five-week field camp in New Zealand and I’d always liked hiking, but that sort of cemented it for me. It made me realize that I sort of want to incorporate the outdoors into whatever I do as a career.”

The Student Conservation Association is an environmental organization that trains teenagers and young adults to become community leaders when it comes to environmental stewardship. The SCA partners with the National Park Service to offer internship opportunities to high school graduates and young adults.

Gallant encourages anyone interested to apply for the program. He has no regrets.

“At this park you can expect to be treated fairly,” Gallant said. “It’s very demanding but it’s also very fair. You get a whole lot of support, and a lot of my co-workers began their careers with the National Park Service as SCA interns. It’s a wonderful way of getting your foot in the door in the park service because it can be difficult to get that first job.”

Aspiring rangers take note: A dream can’t be achieved if it isn’t first attempted.

One Month In with Montana Conservation Corps

Article, written by Brendan Allen, appears in The MCC KCrew Blog. Published June 30, 2014. Image from National Park Service website.

June 19th marked the first full month of my service with the Montana Conservation Corps, and the day struck in the midst of my crew’s second hitch, a fast paced, cut-and-run slam of a trail clearing in Flathead National Forest. We were helping open up some the area’s integral trails before hiking season really took off, and it was quickly evident that we had our work cut out for us. We met 72 hours of straight rain, a frigid stream crossing, and switchbacks covered in blow down from a winter season avalanche. Once daylight set in, however, it was there to stay. We camped less than a dozen miles from the Canadian border, so sunlight stretched out to nearly 11:00 PM, with a sliver of dawn breaking only four or five hours later.

At first, I was too swept up in the actual work to note the occasion. When I’m working on a trail, my brain tends to prioritize the physical goals and stimuli around me before allowing any time for introspection. Hours fly by, and all I’ve thought about are what branches need to be lopped; what tread looks uneven; what trees are going to fall where; and how I need to hike, hike, hike to the next patch of work. When we pause for water, the crew trades a few jokes to keep up morale, and then we keep moving.

This single-mindedness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It keeps me happily grounded in my work – I’m able to consider every gradually completed step as an accomplishment, and I focus more intensely on my physical surroundings. Potential risks, ones that I might have daydreamed past otherwise, become more evident. I’m able to discern the unspoken needs of my fellow crew members more easily. It keeps me from getting too wrapped up in my own thoughts. It keeps me safe.

That being said, once I returned to camp on the 19th, the realization that I was already nearing the end of my second hitch blew me away. It wasn’t that I felt shocked by any abrupt changes in my life; instead, the surprise came from just how easily I had slipped into my new role. As I thought about the past month, I watched my fellow crew members slip into the little roles of domesticity that emerge in camp life: Courtney and Jacob were just finishing dinner while Dorian and Geoff stoked the fire, Amanda cleaned her chainsaw, and Aneesa gathered water from the nearby stream. And, like that, I understood why my transition into crew life had come so easily. It was having this crew around me – this rag-tag jumble of cross-country conservationists – that made such backbreaking work seem so easy and warm. I stood, stepped forward, and moved to help Aneesa with the water.

Adventurous Auburnite A Yosemite ‘Bear Intern’

Article, written by Andrew Westrope, appears in the Auburn Journal. Published June 5, 2014.

At 18 years of age, Auburn resident Jessica Hadley is well-acquainted with the wild, wooly fauna of the American outback.

The daughter of lifelong environmentalists, she’s been stalking bears and watching wolves from a distance since childhood, but this summer she’s been enlisted by Yosemite National Park to work within arm’s reach of them.

Hadley has been chosen to be a “bear intern” at Yosemite for three months over the summer, from June 23 through September. She said the aim of the job is to reduce human-bear conflict by educating the public and assisting with “bear management,” which will involve tracking the animals with radio collars and personal observation, finding ways to discourage them from entering campsites and occasionally capturing them for removal.

Hadley is the daughter of park rangers who met and married at Yosemite and now work for the US Fish & Wildlife Service – Dad works on wildfires, Mom cleans up oil spills – and she took a cue from their passion at a young age. She remembers following bears and observing wolf packs on family vacations, and having graduated from Del Oro High School in 2013 and finished her first year at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she thought a summer job with the Student Conservation Association was the next step.

“At Yosemite, one of the main attractions has always been the bears. They used to have bear shows … but they stopped those a long time ago,” she said. “We will be catching a few, probably. Sometimes we have to euthanize them due to conflict, but they’ve been doing a good job, so there’s been less and less (of that). … We catch them to collar them and put tags in their ears, and monitor age, weight and all of that.”

Park ranger and Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said Hadley will be one of only a handful of bear interns in the park, as the position is both competitive and highly specialized, and generally reserved for candidates with at least some college experience.

“Being a park ranger and working in a national park is very popular and competitive. … I’ve hired (SCA interns) over the years, and it’s a great foot in the door,” he said. “If there’s a bear that is breaking into cars in the campground, they’ll capture the bear and ‘haze’ it to give it aversive conditioning or negative reinforcement. They work closely with the bears, and I know SCAs we’ve hired in the past generally have experience working with wildlife, have an interest in working with them or are someone we feel is capable of doing something like that, because it’s a very specialized and difficult job.”

Hadley said her attraction to the challenge is twofold: The animals need protection, and she finds them inherently fascinating — wolves for their ecological importance, and bears for their sheer intelligence. She said bears are also extremely curious creatures, even more so than cats and dogs, and she likes knowing the interest is mutual.

“It’s not completely food-motivated, either,” she said. “They’re still interested in people, even if there isn’t food. I find that really fascinating.”

From Nepal to New York, One Planet to Conserve

Article, written by Amosh Neupane, appears on the SCA website.

To many people, the thought of spending the summer outside working under the sun isn’t a pleasing prospect. The sweat, the sunburn, the awkward tan lines, the freckles, and all the other downsides of outdoor labor make people desire an air-conditioned oﬃce workspace over something outdoorsy. But guess what… I just happen to be working for the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) – a collaborative summer crew program with the Student Conservation Association (SCA) and the National Park Service (NPS) that entails all the challenges mentioned above, and I’m super excited for it!

I’m Amosh Neupane from Queens in New York City, and a warm namaste to you all!

The Youth Conservation Corps is a nationwide program that provides youth my age with an opportunity to engage in conservation projects at a local level. The job includes, but is not limited to, tasks like invasive species and storm debris removal, trail restoration and maintenance, and building climate-resilient local ecosystems. Most importantly, YCC has been fostering interaction among youth from different parts of the country and forging bonds among young minds that share an interest in the environmental and conservation sector.

Having moved to New York a year and ten months ago from Nepal, learning about America and adapting to American culture has been my utmost priority. The differences between New York and Bhadrapur (the quaint little town I hail from) had me taken aback initially. The open spaces back home would remain only in my memory. Having a kitchen garden to grow vegetables would be out of question. I realized I would have to adjust to living in a tiny space in a large city, which was the exact opposite of how I lived in Nepal.

I gradually started learning about and interacting with New York and started liking it. However, I wasn’t truly introduced to the green side of New York until I interned with the Greening Western Queens program during my ﬁrst summer in the U.S. After the internship, there was no turning back. I started participating in several environmental awareness campaigns and searching for volunteer events. After volunteering at the ﬁrst SCA ConSERVE NYC event, I started an environmental club at my high school: the Coalition Of Students for Environment and Climate Action (COSECA).

I still haven’t fully explored the greener aspects of the city. That being said, can anyone claim to know New York City completely? For a city of such magnitude, inﬂuence, ever-changing population, culture, and diversity, one can only ever claim to have interacted with New York at a certain stage, on a certain level. I’ve known New York as my second home. I’ve come to know the neighborhoods of New York, the people of New York, the food of New York, and the languages of New York. I now know that the largest urban rooftop garden in the world is in New York, a few blocks from my house. I know that the Croton Reservoir that supplies water to the largest city in the country is a train ride away. I know that Great Kills Park, the innovative dump-site-turned-park on Staten Island, is a ferry ride away. But I also know that I would fail any quiz about these sites if I were given one.

So I’m excited for my forthcoming internship. I have never been more ready to venture out into the urban wilderness and learn more about the city I now call home. New York may be a shopper’s paradise, an art lover’s mecca, and a foodie’s dream, but it can also be the Sierras for any budding young John Muir. And this kid intends to discover the side of New York where nature and the city meet. Brace yourself New Yorkers – I am marching into the New York City wilderness and a little sunburn and sweat isn’t going to stop me!

California Conservation Corps Crews Available to Assist with Water Conservation Projects

Article, written by Lisa Lien-Mager, appears on the Association of California Water Agencies website. Published July 2, 2014.

The California Conservation Corps is making crews available to assist with water efficiency projects through a new program funded by emergency drought relief legislation enacted earlier this year.

As part of the program, supervised CCC crews will complete water conservation projects such as plumbing retrofits and installation of water-efficient landscaping at no cost to public agencies and non-profit organizations, as well as commercial property owners. Agency sponsors would be responsible for materials and supplies.

Eligible projects include installation of water-efficient landscaping and irrigation systems; replacement of plumbing fixtures at schools, public agencies and commercial properties; installation of water-efficient fixtures such as low-flow toilets; water efficiency education and outreach activities in disadvantaged communities; and energy projects that contribute to energy and water conservation.

Five crews of 10 members each will be fully trained on irrigation and plumbing systems and ready for assignments after July 25. Crews will be working out of CCC centers in Napa, Stockton, Santa Maria, Inland Empire, and Norwalk and would prefer projects within 50 miles or a one-hour drive of those locations.

Applicants are required to submit a short application to the CCC detailing the scope of the project. Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis through Sept. 2 for projects in 2014. Applications for 2015 projects will be accepted beginning Nov. 1 through Aug 1, 2015.

The CCC is a state agency established in 1976 to provide young people with work and life skills training in natural resource conservation work and education programs throughout the state. Typical CCC projects include trail building, fire fuel reduction, energy efficiency surveys and retrofits, and emergency response operations.