Name: Student Conservation Association Manchester (SCA Manchester) Program: AmeriCorps, Issue Area: Environmental Stewardship The SCA Manchester program is a dynamic environmental conservation service and education experience for high school youth in New Hampshire. Four AmeriCorps members lead up to sixty youth a year from the Great Manchester, NH high schools in conservation service to their immediate communities and throughout the state. This program give them tools and experience to develop leadership and team building abilities, learn about environmental issues; and gain career skills and experience to be the conservation leaders of tomorrow, and today. Now in its 6th year, SCA Manchester has reached hundreds of inner city youth and they, in turn, have provided thousands of hours of environmental stewardship services to their communities and throughout the state. The program runs year-round starting with recruiting and school presentation in the late fall and early winter. This recruiting is specifically tuned to speak to the diverse motivated, though often underserved youth in the inner city. Manchester has one of the most culturally diverse populations in New Hampshire if not the North East. Many of the members are first generation immigrants looking forward to the opportunities growing up in the United States. With the arrival of a new Americorps leader team of 10-month AmeriCorps interns in January, the program kicks into high gear starting with after school community meetings for the high school prospective and current members. In these meetings they begin the planning and outreach to identify environmental service projects that will engage them in hands-on service learning. Community leaders and collaborative programs are engaged to enhance the experiential learning.
The 2012 program is on a trajectory to surpass last year’s banner performance. In 2011 alone, 52 high school students participated in the SCA Manchester program. Between February and October they received over 750 hours of educational opportunities and provided over 2500 hours of environmental stewardship service. They worked on local food bank gardens; clean and studied public ocean coastline; improved city parks’ trails; lead a community education Earth Day event; and worked on pedestrian safe ways to schools. These day programs groom them for several summer conservation team experiences where they camp and work for two weeks at a time in the White Mountain National Forest and other NH public lands. There they develop strong, healthy minds and bodies while building trails, improving campsites, repairing and restoring wildlife habitat and learning conservation career job skills. For many of these young people it is their first experience in wilderness that sets them on a lifelong quest to protect and experience the great outdoors through work and recreational opportunities.
Partnering with multiple organizations, agencies, schools, and programs and providing much needed conservation service, this program is getting inner city youth invested both in their communities and understanding their impact and leadership potential in the world we share. They are the epitome of a great AmeriCorps program.