The 21CSC will accomplish critical restoration work in Central Oregon while providing training opportunities and work experience to youth and veterans in Oregon. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced yesterday that Heart of Oregon Corps is one of 91 initial organizations nationwide that have been approved as member organizations to help implement the Obama Administration’s 21st Century Conservation Service Corps (21CSC). The 21CSC is a national collaborative effort to put America’s youth and veterans to work protecting, restoring, and enhancing America’s natural and cultural resources.
Heart of Oregon Corps is a nonprofit organization invested in empowering and inspiring change in the lives of Central Oregon youth through jobs, education, and stewardship. Their programming create pathways out of poverty while stimulation regional economic growth.
The “work-learn-earn” model invests in local young people, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds, to prepare them for the workforce and to encourage their self-sufficiency. Heart of Oregon Corps believes that young people want to work, want to gain education, and want to serve their community, and as an organization, they strive to provide them with the opportunities to do so.
The 21CSC engages young Americans aged 15-25, and veterans up to age 35. Through the 21CSC, young people and veterans will accomplish meaningful work, gaining important personal and professional skills and builds a lifelong connection to the outdoors. All 21CSC participants gain skills, and deliver results that include enhancing recreational opportunities and access, protecting wildlife, restoring impaired watersheds, removing invasive species, increasing energy efficiency, preserving historic or cultural sites, enhancing community spaces, coordinating volunteers, supporting monitoring or data needs, responding to natural disasters, reducing hazardous fuels and protecting communities from wildfire.
Increasing diversity and expanding opportunities for all youth and veterans are core 21CSC principles: all 21CSC member organizations emphasize diversity and inclusion, and the 21CSC National Council will focus in the coming months on recruiting additional member organizations, targeting new programs in diverse areas, and investing in training and career pathways for a diverse group of participants.
The 21CSC is supported by the federal 21CSC National Council, which includes members from USDA, DOI, the Corporation for National and Community Service [CNCS], the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Council on Environmental Quality, and by the Partnership for the 21CSC, which was launched in June of 2013 as a collaborative group to support the 21CSC.
For the Federal Register notice inviting letters of interest and outlining the eight principles, click Here.
For more information, visit the partner-hosted website www.21csc.org.
