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! 

An Operation Fresh Start Member Shares his Journey from Foster Care to College

From Operation Fresh Start – March 2013 Newsletter 

By Dominique

Before OFS – while I was at a foster home in Oregon – I had a foster brother who was enrolled and witnessed many great things OFS did in and for his life. At the time, I didn’t know much about Fresh Start except that I could earn an H.S.E.D. (High School Equivalency Diploma) while also building affordable housing in the community. 

Since then, OFS has put me in a position to better my life. I have completed some pre- college classes, earned tuition money, and learned a lot about housing construction and conservation work. OFS has also given me opportunities to network in my community. I’m most thankful that Fresh Start has allowed me to build upon life skills that I already possess. I thank OFS for having patience and taking a chance on me to become greater. When I leave OFS, I will be moving on to bigger and better things. Starting this fall, I plan on attending and completing MATC (Madison Area Technical College). My ultimate goal is to end up doing something I thoroughly enjoy and love. In the mean time, I will work at obtaining a great job. After I get the job, I hope to get my own apartment and vehicle so I can do my own thing.

Fresh Start has influenced me in a very positive way. The staff are great people who help guide the lives of troubled youth who are willing to try. Without the help of Operation Fresh Start my path would have been a lot more rocky and gloomy.

A KUPU Intern Shares his Passion for Nature and Photography

 

From KUPU – Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps 

Chris Wong is one of Kupu’s current 2012-2013 EIP interns (the EIP Program falls under the Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps). He is based on Hawaii Island, working with the USDA Forest Service. Chris has played an active role in keeping EIP interns connected 

throughout their term of service, and is currently organizing the second-ever AmeriCorps EIP gathering on the Big Island, at Hakalau Forest and Kanakaleonui Bird Corridor atop Mauna Kea. Chris is an avid wildlife and nature photographer as well — check out

 a few of his photos from the field (scrolling photos at the top of the page – all photos owned by Chris Wong). 

Throughout his EIP internship Chris has spent a lot of time in the field doing conservation-related management activities, however the most rewarding part of his experience to date has been the opportunity to educate local youth about conserving Hawaii’s natural resources and native species. Kupu asked Chris to describe his internship thus far, and here is what he had to say:

“Since beginning my internship at the US Forest Service, I’ve worked with many projects. I’ve floundered head high in an uluhe/clidemia forest, measured native trees in Kona, tracked rats in the Saddle Road Kipuka and even helped restore the forest at Hakalau. Being in the field is definitely enjoyable and so has applying my horticulture degree in the greenhouse, but the most enjoyable and rewarding experience has been the educational experience. I currently help out with a project called Teaching Change and have taken on my own project called Ulu Lehulehu- the Million Ohia Initiative. Both projects involve working with students in local schools and there, I get to see them excited about the forest. This is especially true with Ulu Lehulehu; I’ve been doing summer internships for four summers now, but being able to pass on knowledge to the next generation is what sets this internship apart from the previous ones. A recent presentation (on March 5th 2013) was no exception. The 6th graders seemed so excited to be planting their own ʻŌhiʻa seeds The fact that they were answering all of my questions correctly and throwing a couple at me told me that the students were excited about ʻŌhiʻa too. To top it off, after the presentation, the teacher telling me that reviewing the scientific method actually covered what he would be doing in a couple of weeks brought it all together and told me that at least today, I did something right.”

Chris is a great example of someone who has found an interest in the environment, and took advantage of the stepping stone-like pathway Kupu has created. He joined HYCC in 2008 as a Gateway team member, returned in 2009 as a Frontiers intern, and is now halfway to finishing his 2012 EIP internship. Chris graduated from the University of Hawaii at Hilo with a bachelor’s degree in Horticulture, and has just been accepted to the University of Washington’s Master of Environmental Horticulture program. Congratulations Chris, Kupu’s March Spotlight!

 

 

 

They can dance, too!: Video of California Conservation staff member and Corpsmembers goes viral

 

Our friend John Griffith and two Corpsmembers (Antwon McCoy and Leonard Patton) with the California Conservation Corps have become an overnight internet sensation! 

Back in August, John posted a video on YouTube of him dancing with Antwon and Leonard. The video captures John, dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and CCC uniform, spontaneously demonstrating some of the moves he’d learned from his Corpsmembers. The end of the video shows Antwon and Leonard clearly surprised (and amused) by their supervisor’s dance skills. After the video was posted to the social news website Reddit this past week, people started going crazy for the cool, “cowboyish boss” with the dance moves. It has now been viewed well over a million times!

The video has popped up on a wide variety of websites and news programs. John, Antwon and Leonard have been interviewed several times over the past few days. Click the links below for coverage of the video, or click here for our Huffington Post article on John’s background and his new environmental book for urban youth, Totem Magic: Going MAD.  

  • NPR – “Two Dance Videos that’ll Make Your Day”
  • HLN – “Surprise! Boss Busts a Move” 
  • ABC – “The YouTube Dance Icon You’d Least Expect”
  • Outdoor Afro – “John Griffith Can Bust a Move – For Nature”
  • Gawker – “Nerdy Boss Learns Dance Moves from Employees then Teaches them How it’s Done”
  • The Huffington Post – “John Griffith Learns to Dance”
  • WORLDSTARHIPHOP – “California Conservation Corps Members Teaching their Boss to Dance to Travis Porter’s Ayy Ladies!”
  • Mashable – “Nature Nerd’s Fly Dance Moves Guaranteed to Make Your Day”
  • The Daily Mail – “Awkward Boss Learns Dance Moves from His Young Employees – then Shows them How it’s Done in this Hilarious Video”
  • The Sacramento Bee – “California Conservation Corps Dance Video Goes Viral”
  • Facebook
  • North Coast Journal – “Nerdtastic Local CCC Mountainman/Boogie God John Griffith”
  • The Today Show
  • California Statewide Law Enforcement Assoc. – “Good Natured Conservationist Gets His Groove On”

 

“SheSheShe” Camps: A Women’s Alternative to the Civilian Conservation Corps


Unemployed women learning job skills at a Depression-era Federal Emergency Relief Association camp in Pennsylvania

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the New Deal Era might have only been for men, but did you know there were also “SheSheShe” camps?

President Franklin Roosevelt launched the CCC in 1933. His wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was excited by the idea of employing youth in environmental conservation jobs, but she was discouraged by how the CCC only served men. She soon began campaigning for a parallel organization that could provide employment for the country’s nearly 200,000 homeless women. Her first suggestion was that women could work in tree nurseries, an idea that was perhaps unconsciously sexist (or maybe shrewdly deliberate).

Though most New Dealer’s scorned Eleanor Roosevelt’s plan, she gained support from Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor. The process of establishing women’s camps was slow, but by 1936 there were 90 residental “SheSheShe” camps, formally known as FERA Camps (Federal Emergency Relief Association). In the end, some 8,500 women benefited from the program.

Learn more information here:
Source 1
Source 2 

Read period articles about women’s camps from the CCC Newspaper, “Happy Days” 
Article 1
Article 2 
 

Video: Chapter 113 – short film documents Maryland CCC Alumni

At our 2013 National Conference last month we were lucky to be joined by members of CCC Legacy Chapter 113 for our plenary session on the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps. We were also lucky to be joined by filmmakers Lance and Brandon Kramer, founders of the DC-based Meridian Hill Pictures production company, who shared their short documentary about the efforts of the Chapter 113 boys to establish a Maryland CCC memorial.

Click here to watch the film and celebrate the 80th anniversary of the CCC!
(Scroll down for the film)

KIDS COUNT Snapshot: Report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds dramatic drop in youth incarceration rate

According to an article by SparkAction, a new KIDS COUNT data snapshot released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation reports that the U.S. youth confinement rate is at a 35-year-low. This decline signals opportunity for alternative, more effective responses to court-involved youth. 

As stated in the report, Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States, America’s rate of locking up young people has dropped by more than 40 percent over a 15-year period, with no decrease in public safety.

The number of young people in correctional facilities in a single day fell to 70,792 in 2010, from a high of 107,637 in 1995. This downward trend, documented in data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, has accelerated in recent years. 

Despite this sharp decline, the United States still leads the industrialized world in locking up its young people…

Click here to read SparkAction’s full coverage of the Report.

The Opportunity Index: Does your Zip Code Matter More than your GPA?


Opportunity Nation seeks to make sure that all Americans, no matter where they’re from, have the opportunity to get ahead in life and find economic success. (photo of Civicorps graduation in Oakland, CA)
 

Editor’s note: The Corps Network is a Coalition Partner of the Opportunity Nation campaign. Elizabeth Clay Roy, Deputy Director of Opportunity Nation, spoke at a plenary session on youth unemployment at The Corps Network National Conference, February 2013.

Children all across the country are told that they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. America is supposed to be the “Land of Opportunity,” but in reality, what is the likelihood that a child from Starr County, TX will grow up to be a scientist, or a lawyer, or the president of a Fortune 500 company? What are the chances that a budding entrepreneur in Loudon County, VA will be able to start a small business?

It’s no secret that where you grew up and where you live can factor enormously into your chances for upward economic mobility. While some people come from neighborhoods with safe streets, good schools, and plenty of desirable jobs, other people come from neighborhoods with no grocery stores, no doctors, and high crime rates. Simply put, some communities offer residents all the amenities and resources needed for personal success, while other communities offer limited pathways to opportunity.

Two organizations, Opportunity Nation and Measure of America, teamed up to create a tool that measures how much opportunity is available in every state and just about any given county in the U.S. This tool, the Opportunity Index, gives a numeric score and a letter grade to about 2,900 counties. All 50 states and the District of Columbia also received numeric scores.

To generate these scores, Measure of America compiled data from the U.S. Census and other publically available records to look at how each state and county fared in three dimensions: Jobs and Local Economy; Education; and Community Health and Civic Life. Rather than just looking at the unemployment rate and the poverty rate, the Opportunity Scores generated by the Index encompass multiple factors that have been demonstrated to impact academic and economic chances.

 “We felt like there was a limited dialogue about how we were doing as a country economically,” said Elizabeth Clay Roy, Deputy Director of Opportunity Nation. “If the official unemployment rate goes up or down, that is significant for a few thousand people, but if new jobs are all low wage that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s going to be a serious impact on economic opportunity…It’s not just about the job you have today. It’s about a number of factors at the community level that can be a stepping stone to opportunity. For example, if you want to start a business but there are no banking institutions to give you a loan, that’s going to limit opportunity. If you have trouble concentrating in school because you’re so concerned about the violence happening in the streets, that’s going to impact opportunity.”

Opportunity Nation is not a research organization; it is a bipartisan national campaign made of community groups, faith-based organizations, non-profits, businesses and educational institutions working to expand economic opportunity. The Index gives Opportunity Nation information to support their campaign and a tool to help spread awareness about America’s opportunity gap.

“Part of what spurred our decision to create this Index was a conversation we had with a young man in New York City as a part of our National Listening Tour who said that he felt like the zip code he grew up in was more important than his GPA in determining his life chances,” said Ms. Clay Roy. “This wasn’t a young man who was trying to excuse a low GPA. He had done well in high school, but he was trying to say that those grades were less important than the school he went to in terms of his chances of getting ahead. We realized how important it was to consider place and community as indicators of opportunity.”

The three dimensions that factor into a state or county Opportunity Score (Jobs and Local Economy, Education, and Community Health and Civic Life) are broken down into numerous indicators of opportunity that can be measured with the data compiled by Measure of America. For example, to see how a region is doing in the Jobs and Local Economy dimension, the Index looks at (among other things) the unemployment rate, the poverty rate, and how many banking institutions there are per 1,000 residents. The Education Dimension looks at preschool enrollment, the on-time high school graduation rate, and the number of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree. The Community Health and Civic Life dimension looks at (among other things) violent crime rates, the number of primary care physicians, and the number of young adults who are unemployed and not in school.

So how much opportunity is available for that child in Starr County, TX? How much opportunity is available to that entrepreneur in Loudon County, VA? Starr County received a D minus on the Opportunity Index, while Loudon County received an A minus. Starr has a median household income of less than $25,000 and nearly 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Loudon County on the other hand has a median household income of over $115,000 and a poverty rate of only about 3 percent. However, the results of these two indicators are perhaps not what resulted in the two counties having such drastically different scores on the Opportunity Index.
 


The Opportunity Index map. The darker blue areas are places with higher Opportunity Scores. The lighter blue areas are places with lower Opportunity Scores.
 

 “When we initially did the Index we thought that the indicator that would be most highly correlated with a state Opportunity Score would be median income, or the poverty rate – something that indicated how wealthy the state is. But as it turned out, the indicator that most correlated with a state’s opportunity score was the percentage of 16 – 24 year olds not in school and not working,” said Ms. Clay Roy. “In a state like Nevada, where you have a high proportion of young people not in school and not working, you get a very low score. In states like Vermont and Minnesota where you have more young people in school and working, you have higher opportunity scores.”

The Opportunity Index tells us that places like Starr have limited opportunity, but what can be done to help such communities raise their scores? How can we help a state like Nevada be more like Vermont or Minnesota? As part of their campaign to build stronger, more equitable local economies, Opportunity Nation and its coalition members are providing numerous forms of assistance to communities that want to raise their scores.

According to Elizabeth Clay Roy, the first thing Opportunity Nation can do to help a community like Starr is provide more detailed information about how their score was compiled. With specific data, Opportunity Nation can help communities pinpoint policy changes or initiatives that could help raise their score.

“We’re looking to engage elected officials to become aware of these scores and begin governing for opportunity and start to think about making some of their policy decisions in line with advancing opportunity,” said Ms. Clay Roy.   

A second way Opportunity Nation is helping communities is with technical assistance and mini grants. Opportunity Nation has helped make connections between some of their coalition members and local community leaders. For example, they have helped leaders in Hampden County, MA connect with The Springfield Institute and a number of nearby colleges in order to develop plans to address the county’s Opportunity Score. The $1,000 mini grants Opportunity Nation provides generally go towards kicking off local events or service projects that could increase Scores.

Another thing Opportunity Nation has done is simply make sure that stakeholders know about the Opportunity Index. Opportunity Nation works with community leaders and media on a local level to spread awareness. The Index has also received national media attention; since its launch in 2011 the Index has been featured on the cover of TIME magazine, in Newsweek, and on the Huffington Post website. They hope to continue to build media attention and awareness with each new release of the Index.

“Ultimately we believe that no one leader or one institution alone can increase opportunity scores. We think this tool has value for elected officials and institutional leadership, but also for community members of all stripes,” said Ms. Clay Roy. “I think only when there is interest from every side will there really be change. Some elected officials may learn about the Index from an organization like ours and get interested, but I think more likely they’re going to be more influenced when their constituents begin to say we’re disappointed in our score and we know we can be a community that’s better than a C and we want to work together to change this.”

Ms. Clay Roy stressed the importance of making sure the Opportunity Index reached people who are passionate about volunteering, service, and mentoring. Volunteer projects and mentoring can be very important parts of increasing a score in a specific dimension or moving a county’s grade from a C to a B. These kinds of projects are also important in how they help people build a connection with their community and feel a sense of responsibility for how their community scores on the Index.

Opportunity Nation hopes to see an across the board 10 percent increase in opportunity within the next 10 years. They created the Shared Plan to lay out policy and nonpolicy ideas that they believe will lead to increased scores. The Shared Plan’s recommendations include boosting mentoring, engaging employers in connecting with young people, and reauthorizing and reforming the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. 

“Even just between 2011 and 2012 there were real changes. We saw improvement for 40 percent of counties in terms of their grade,” said Ms. Clay Roy. “We see the Opportunity Index as a community awareness and advocacy tool, so we’re really excited that a lot of our grassroots partners around the country have gotten excited or incensed by their Index scores and have started to build local coalitions around community organizations to try and increase their scores…Community organizations have always been at the forefront of advancing opportunity and mobility and economic security. Adding this data just arms them even more with the tools they need to do their work well.”

The Opportunity Index has been released with data for 2011 and 2012. Opportunity Nation plans to continue to release the Index with updated information.  

Click here for a PDF describing the Opportunity Index. 

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For Baltimore Youth, Opportunity Goes Green – a story from our friends at SparkAction

 

Baltimore Center for Green Careers

By Alison Waldman, SparkAction
Click the link at the bottom to read the full story

At one point in his life, Jerrell Henry wasn’t sure what the future would hold.

Growing up in Baltimore, he didn’t have a college degree and saw no opportunity to get a steady, paying job. He was on the pathway to a series of jobs that barely paid the bills, and wouldn’t give him a career.

Then he heard about Baltimore Center for Green Careers (BCGC), which offers local, hands-on training in green jobs.

So he tried it. Jerrell is now fully employed with a local company only weeks after the program’s end. That’s no small feat in Baltimore, where unemployment is considerably higher than the national average, especially among young African American males.

“I loved the program,” he says. “They kept us on our toes. They helped us learn about speaking to employees, and gave us job readiness.”

BCGC is one of several Corps programs honored at The Corps Network’s 2013 Conference in Washington, DC, in February.

Corps are comprehensive youth development programs in cities and states that provide young people with job training, academic programming and leadership training through experience in service. A direct descendant of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, today’s Corps have been growing in recognition and enrollment as the economy leaves more young people out of work and unsure of the next step to a steady career.

This year’s conference covered the ways that Corps can improve programs to better serve opportunity youth—young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school or connected to the workforce. It also looked at how federal funding streams like the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) can be used to bring effective Corps programs to scale, and celebrated the best programs and members through its 2013 Corpsmembers awards and Corps Projects of the Year.

Here’s a closer look at a growing green-jobs success story in Baltimore.