July 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 48

State Parks Youth Corps help
monitor the quality of the Current
River at Montauk State Park.
A major benefit
of the State
Parks Youth
Corps was
the assistance
they provided
for landscape
restoration and
maintenance of
the grounds at
state parks.

46 Parks & Recreation

SPYC members and toured an original CCC camp
that was rehabbed by SPYC last year.
" We also, " said Bryan, " dedicated a memorial to
CCC Company 1713 and that was one of the most
special moments of my career. "
As Rich Dolesh, chief public policy officer for
NRPA, says, " CCC was one of the most popular and
successful federal programs in history. It was a recognition that millions of men were out of work. Times
were so different, but we can draw parallels between
the 1930s and 2010s, although you have to be careful.
For one, it would be really tough to run a long-running residential facility today.
" These jobs teach self-reliance, self discipline, and
good habits for work and responsibility, " says Dolesh
of the parallels. " That is incalculably valuable. "
While federal stimulus money played an important
part in jump-starting more recent conservation corps
efforts, there's more to it, Dolesh emphasizes. " No
matter where the funding comes from, this kind of effort has to be worth it to the public agencies in terms
of the value of the work received. It cannot be about
making work. It is about learning skills and getting
the satisfaction of seeing a project come to fruition. "
Stephen Coleman, president of Washington Parks
& People, which leads greening initiatives across
the parks of Washington, D.C., sees today's efforts
as even deeper and broader than the CCC. " You
are getting a modern-day CCC, a nationwide movement of grassroots efforts that takes many different
forms, " Coleman says. " A number have drawn on
support from the stimulus act but because of the explosion of volunteer service and teaching service in
the schools, this is growing broader and deeper than
a single nationwide program like CCC. "
" While many involved in it might not think of it as
a movement, " Coleman adds, " it is because many of
us are touching one little part of the elephant. When
you add up city after city it's massive. "

J U LY 2 0 1 1

www.NRPA .ORG

Who They Are. What They Do.
Similar to the original CCC, many current conservation corps programs involve youth in their late
teens and early 20s-- though, of course, in stark
contrast to the 1930s-women are as involved as
men. In many cases, recruiting is done among the
disadvantaged who may not have any opportunity
for jobs-and certainly not in a nature-oriented setting. Whether or not workers are paid-and how
much and by whom-is a patchwork situation that
might depend on the location, the need, and even
that year's budget.
In Los Angeles, a massive volunteer program
has taken on a life of its own. According to Jon Kirk
Mukri, general manager of the city's Department of
Recreation and Parks, " We have always had a vibrant volunteer program. What we did was really
enhance it. What's critical is that every volunteer
is fingerprinted and background-checked by our
Department of Justice. As a result, they can take on
a wide variety of tasks and have become critical to
how we function.
" Most of our sports programs are handled by volunteers and, depending on the season, we have as
many as 5,000 people volunteering in a given month, "
Mukri says. " We have a group in our public affairs
office that does nothing but coordinate volunteers. "
The need for help is stark. Typical of many cities,
Los Angles, according to Mukri, had 2,100 full time
and 8,000 part-time employees just three years ago;
today, those numbers are 1,500 and 4,000.
Los Angeles finds its workers via community
service referrals from courts. But the city also gets
young adults who graduate from the city's camp program and come in as Counselors in Training, Mukri
says. During the summer, a number are brought on
as paid and non-paid workers (the younger ones not
getting paid.) Depending on the funding, they have
more than 1,000 summer hires.

July 2011 - Parks & Recreation

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