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SeaWorld Visits Earth Conservation Corps in Washington, DC

Children from the PAL Club visit the Earth Conservation Corps’s Pump House location to see Stomp the alligator and other animals brought by SeaWorld. Picture from the ECC Facebook page.

Earth Conservation Corps (ECC) – headquartered on the Anacostia River in Washington, DC – is certainly accustomed to welcoming feathered visitors; the Corps’s Raptor Education Program has hosted many demonstrations with the help of owls, hawks, and other birds of prey. Yesterday, however, the Corps’s Pump House location in Diamond Teague Park welcomed a visit from some new friends…some furry and scaly friends, that is.

A red ruffed lemur explores the Earth Conservation Corps office. Picture from the ECC Facebook page.

An American alligator, a red ruffed lemur, and a great horned owl came to the Corps on Tuesday, March 26 with staff members from the Education program at SeaWorld-Busch Gardens in Orlando, FL. Children from PAL Club (People. Animals. Love.) attended the event. Usually the PAL students come to ECC on Friday afternoons to watch Corpsmembers in the Raptor Education program give bird presentations, but the visit from SeaWorld gave the children a chance to come face to face with animals they had never seen before. Among other things, the students learned about how owls digest their food, about how lemurs are losing their natural habitats, and about how to be safe around alligators. They also had the opportunity to see a sock and prosthetic leg made for an elephant.

The PAL Club, a partner with ECC, is an after school program based out of Stanton Elementary School in Southeast, DC. The program builds on children’s natural curiosity about animals to stimulate scientific inquiry and inspire an interest in reading and math. The children care for pets, read about animals, and make trips to organizations such as Earth Conservation Corps to learn about less familiar animals. Usually, when the students come for their Friday visits, they are taught by ECC Corpsmembers; young men and women from under-resourced DC neighborhoods who are out of work and not in school. ECC gives these Corpsmembers a chance to learn valuable job skills by working in teams to complete local conservation projects. The Raptor Education Program teaches Corpsmembers how to handle birds of prey and helps them develop their public speaking and social skills by giving them the opportunity to present the birds to groups like PAL Club.

KUPU featured in Pacific Business News

Photo from Pacific Business News

KUPU was featured in a recent edition of Pacific Business News. Click below for a PDF version of the full article. Congratulations, KUPU!

By Jenna Blakely
Pacific Business News
March 22, 2013

Nurturing the state’s next generation of environmental workers has become increasingly important in order to fill jobs needed for Hawaii’s rapidly growing green sector, a responsibility that Kupu has incorporated into its mission.

The local nonprofit teaches sustainability to Hawaii’s youth through hands-on service programs and internship opportunities. Kupu — the name means to sprout or grow in the Hawaiian language — formed in 2007, but traces its roots to 2001 when the program was part of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Since 2007, it has evolved into offering four main programs that serve about 300 youth … Read more.

Waukegan, Illinois Salutes Local AmeriCorps Members

Speakers at an event to honor AmeriCorps members in Waukegan, IL. Corpsmember of the Year Germain Castellanos pictured on the far left.

For one week every year, communities and nonprofit organizations rally together to honor AmeriCorps members, AmeriCorps alums, and the hard work these men and women do for our country. During this year’s AmeriCorps Week, held March 9 – 17, Youth Conservation Corps of Lake County (YCC) joined with other area nonprofits to salute local AmeriCorps members at a ceremony in Waukegan, Illinois’s Robert Sabonjian Plaza.

Illinois AmeriCorps members.

The event included speeches from a number of individuals who know firsthand the importance of AmeriCorps programs. Attendees heard from representatives from Youth Build Lake County and Habitat for Humanity Lake County, as well as from Bob McCammon, Executive Director of YCC. Germain Castellanos, a YCC alum and a 2005 Corpsmember of the Year, also spoke.

Since 1994, over 20,000 people from Illinois have served as AmeriCorps members. They have donated a combined 26 million hours of service to bettering American communities.

Thank you for everything you do!

EarthCorps Participates in Tidal Wetland Restoration in Effort to Increase Wetland Greenhouse Gas Sequestration

Restoring tidal wetlands: pioneering a biocarbon solution at the Snohomish River Delta

By Keeley O’Connell, Senior Project Manager, EarthCorps

Tidal wetlands provide great potential to sequester and store greenhouse gases. Restore Americas Estuaries and EarthCorps, with funding from NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation and support from Western Washington University, are investigating the carbon sequestration value of tidal wetlands.

The goal of EarthCorps’ effort is to assist locally with Restore America’s Estuaries national effort to develop new market and policy-based incentives that leverage carbon offsets to fund the conservation and restoration of coastal wetlands. We are losing these wetlands at an unsustainable rate of up to 3 percent globally per year.

Most carbon offset science and projects have focused on forestry or agriculture; however, research suggests that coastal wetlands sequester carbon at rates 3-5 times greater than temperate forests. Coastal wetlands represent significant stores of soil carbon, accumulated over centuries and millennia. In addition, some tidal marshes have the potential to reduce emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as methane.

…EarthCorps’ Coastal Blue Carbon project in the Snohomish River delta and estuary is the first in a nationwide effort to develop protocols for greenhouse gas sequestration through tidal wetland habitat restoration. This area is ideal because it contains a full spectrum of wetland types in one watershed. It also has a suite of shovel-ready restoration projects. This project will deliver site-specific, field-verified carbon values. Field data will contribute to the growing body of literature on wetland carbon pools.

Click here to read more

Powerful Speeches Delivered at YouthBuild’s 25th Annual AmeriCorps Conference of Young Leaders

A YouthBuild member shows off his moves at a Talent Show.

Earlier this week I was very excited to attend a segment of YouthBuild’s Conference of Young Leaders. For the uninitiated, YouthBuild is a series of youth development programs that “work to unleash the intelligence and positive energy of low-income youth to rebuild their communities and their lives.”

Numerous partners of YouthBuild, including The Corps Network, were invited to watch as nearly 30 Youthbuild members competed for 8 elected positions on Youthbuild’s Youth Leadership Council. Candidates gave short 2 minute speeches highlighting their backgrounds, the role YouthBuild had played in improving their lives, and why they wanted to be on the Council. 115 delegates from around the country attend the Conference, and so the audience was filled with supportive peers and mentors. Some YouthBuild members are even part of Service and Conservation Corps where YouthBuild programs also operate. And while the time each candidate had to speak was short, I found that there was an incredible amount of passion, authenticity, and inspirational messages interwoven in what they each had to say.

Here are some of the great quotes that I wrote down among all of the speeches (and my apologies if some of these I recorded with some minor variations! Rapid fire inspiration is sometimes hard to record quickly when spewing forth like a river busting through a dam):

“We want to show this country we aren’t losers. We’re leaders. We’re not menaces. We’re ministers.”

“You are who you are based upon your actions not how you look.”

“This is your chance to make a difference in your life.”

“Without Youthbuild there’s so much I could be into that’s not positive.”

“Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean construction jobs are just for men.”

“Service means a lot to me and it’s a big part of who I am.”

“YouthBuild took me out of a dangerous river where I wasn’t building bridges for future generations.”

“I’m already a member of the Youth Leadership Council even if there isn’t an official spot for me.”

“I promise to lead myself to the top leaving no one behind.”

“I want to be that domino effect where one person helps another and it keeps going.”

“One of my biggest dreams is to build my mom’s first home from the ground up.”

“If the rural [community] doesn’t speak up, our problems won’t get fixed.”

“In this world we are all atoms, full of energy.”

“As Frederick Douglas said, ‘without struggles comes no progress.'”

“A lot of people say you can’t turn a prostitute and drug dealer into a housewive, but here I am… I feel like I committed adultry because I’m married and I’m also in love with YouthBuild.”

“No dejes para maniana lo que puedas hacer hoy / Leave not for tommorow what you can finish today.”

“Education is a great equalizer.”

I express my congratulations to all of the candidates for having the courage to run and tell their deeply personal stories to what was essentially a large room of strangers. I also am glad I did not have to vote, as there were clearly many, many worthy candidates for those 8 spots on the youth council. Thanks also to YouthBuild for the invitation to participate in this inspirational event!

Proposed law could reclassify Texas high schools, benefiting American YouthWorks

From KUT – Austin, by Alexandria Mayo

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) reports that less than 85 percent of the students in the class of 2010 graduated. At a hearing Thursday in the Texas Senate, lawmakers heard the case for better tracking students who end up back in school.

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a member of the Senate Public Education Committee, told members that even though high school graduation rates in Texas are improving, some schools aren’t getting credit for their part in those improvements. She was talking about schools that enroll dropouts and give students a high school diploma if they earn their credits and meet the requirements.

Van de Putte wants the the TEA to account for these students and their schools differently. She’s written a bill that would designate schools where at least half of enrolled students at least 17 as “dropout recovery schools.”

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D – San Antonio, TX

She says these schools can get poor ratings because they don’t graduate students at the same age and speed as traditional schools. By creating a separate category for these schools, the TEA could give them points towards their accountability rating for each high school diploma they give.

Charter schools like Premier and American YouthWorks in Austin would benefit if her bill becomes law.

Parc Smith, chief executive of American YouthWorks, says his school has students who get pregnant and leave, and others who are homeless. But many come back. So he wants the state’s measuring stick to take this into account.

“We accelerate the learning rate and we get them to graduate, and so we would like to see some measurement that honors that growth we’re doing with those students rather than penalizing us for them not graduating with their original cohort,” Smith said. “We didn’t create that problem. They come to us two to three years behind.”

Blanca Lopez dropped out in middle school and stayed out for six years. She’s now at Premier in South Austin. She started last September and has finished the equivalent of two years of high school. She has plans to finish.

“The teachers worked with me to get back on track,” Lopez said. “I made the mistake of dropping out once, six years ago, and I’m not making that mistake.”

American YouthWorks rebrands E-Corps as Texas Conservation Corps and announces new disaster response program

Swearing-in Ceremony at the Texas State Capitol for new members of the Texas Conservation Corps (formerly Environmental Corps, or E-Corps)

This week the Texas Conservation Corps (TxCC), a service program of American YouthWorks, announced that it will operate emergency response teams. Though based out of Texas, the teams will be prepared to provide relief when disaster strikes in other states. One crew is already in New Jersey helping with Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. When the crews are not responding to emergencies, they will work on conservation and disaster mitigation projects throughout the state of Texas.

This new program was made possible through an AmeriCorps grant provided by the One Star Foundation. The funds will be used to train Corpsmembers in hazardous debris removal, home repair, shelter management, and volunteer management.

The announcement about the disaster response teams was made at a swearing-in ceremony for new Corpsmembers on the South Steps of the Texas Capitol on March 22^,2013. These Corpsmembers will be some of the first young people to serve in the Texas Conservation Corps under its new name. The program operated as E-Corps (Environmental Corps) for the past 17 years. Though the program has a new name, it will continue to provide youth the opportunity to solve real community issues through impactful conservation and disaster relief projects in Texas and adjacent states. American YouthWorks is hosting an event later this month to celebrate the rebranding.

Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture pays a visit to Southwest Conservation Corps’ Los Valles office

Colorado Commissioer of Agriculture John Salazar visits with staff members at Southwest Conservation Corps’s Los Valles office to learn about AmeriCorps

Editor’s Note: John Salazar, Commissioner of the Colorado Department of Agriculture, recently visited Southwest Conservation Corps’s Salida, CO office as part of a program to raise awareness about the importance of AmeriCorps programs in rural communities. Before he was appointed Commissioner by Governor John Hickenlooper, Salazar served as a United States Representative for Colorado’s 3rd District from 2005 – 2011. Commissioner Salazar is the older brother of Ken Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior, who spoke at The Corps Network’s annual award ceremony on Capitol Hill in February.

Originally Published in The Mountain Mail of Salido, Colorado – story by Casey Kelly

With the focus on improving rural economies, Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture John Salazar toured Southwest Conservation Corps’ Los Valles office in Salida Friday.

The visit was part of Serve Colorado’s “Honorary Member for a Day” program to highlight the impact of AmeriCorps programs in Colorado communities.

“As First Lady Michelle Obama has tried to push farm-to-table and fighting childhood obesity, we want to see if there is a place for the Colorado Department of Agriculture to help,” Salazar said.

Robin Lewis, AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) member serving with Southwest Conservation Corps, discussed efforts to increase access to fresh local food, like the school district garden, and future plans for more farm-to-table projects.

“We have a great pool of young people that we want to connect to the community,” Lewis said.

While touring the Los Valles office, Lewis showed Salazar the garden tended by the corps’ crew members. She said last season the crew grew 200 pounds of zucchini, Brussels sprouts, tomatillos, broccoli and other vegetables to feed themselves.

Program Director Julie Mach said the harvests were bountiful enough that the crews sold some of the extra produce to local farmers’ markets later in the season.

“The idea is to make the program self-sustaining,” she said.

Mach said the conservations corps hosts about 50 AmeriCorps members each year, who come to Salida to work on environmental conservation projects on public lands.

Lewis also coordinates a agriculture-focused program known as AgriCorps, which she said brings 60 young people in the summer and fall to do community service projects.

“These programs can coexist with big agriculture operations,” Salazar said.

Salazar said the Department of Agriculture has limited funding, but does have access to some federal grants.

Carlo Boyd, with Buena Vista Home & Garden, attended the meeting with Salazar and talked with the commissioner about affordable housing, water and ideas to mobilize young people.

Concerning water, Salazar said he’d like to shift the conversation to focus on conservation.

“I’m a farmer and rancher, and we use conservation measures. We only use as much water as the crop consumes,” he said. “Let’s start talking about the water we have and figure out a way to plan around that availability. The technology is here.”

Mach brought up conservation projects Southwest Conservation Corps has been involved in to promote conservation, such as replacing old showerheads, toilets and other appliances with water-efficient alternatives.

“It’s not as much about reinventing the wheel as it is using the technology that exists now to be more efficient,” she said.

Video: Still a lot to do after Hurricane Sandy – How are Corps helping?

A video by Clodagh McGowan

What is life like today out in the neighborhood of Breezy Point, Queens? This community, located on the far western tip of the Rockaway peninsula, sustained serious damage during Hurricane Sandy. In addition to the devastation caused by the storm surge and high winds, over 100 Breezy Point homes burned to the ground the night Sandy blew into New York City.

Volunteers, including many young men and women from Service and Conservation Corps, have provided millions of dollars worth of free labor to the Sandy Recovery efforts in Far Rockaway. Check out this video by a journalism student at Columbia University about the continued hard work of Corpsmembers and other dedicated volunteers. The video includes an interview with Dakota Deringer, a Corpsmember with Conservation Corps Minnesota & Iowa. Keep up the good work, everyone!