Publications
NPS tells America to GET DIRTY. The "Green New Deal" and Service and Conservation Corps. The Green New Deal will update Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s. When FDR inherited the Great Depression from Herbert Hoover, the brilliance of his solution was to take two crises-a decayed infrastructure and massive unemployment-and combine them to form a single success. Through programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Americans were given a chance to act in the face of disaster and make a contribution to the greater good-while lifting themselves up out of poverty. The same opportunity exists today.
The National Park Service has just released a recruitment brochure promoting Public Lands Corps with the all-too-appropriate title: GET DIRTY: Join the Public Lands Corps. Thanks to Corps from New Mexico to Montana to California (and more!), the brochure is lovingly illustrated with real Corpsmembers acquiring stains that few laundry products can remove, while making real improvements across our public lands. If you have questions about the brochure, please feel free to contact
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at NPS (202/513-7159), and if you’d like a big stack of the brochures, please contact
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at NPS (202/513-7158).
Corps: Jobs Today, A Lifetime of Employment Tomorrow. For the young people who currently make up one-third of the jobless in
America, Corps can, first of all, provide jobs-and, furthermore, 
the abilities that are firm foundations for lifetimes of employment. Service and Conservation Corps use a "work-first" model that provides paid work experience through service to almost 30,000 young people annually. These programs offer both a short term answer to extraordinarily high levels of youth unemployment and a long term solution to ensure that every American has the tools needed to succeed in the workplace. In addition, while Corps build work-ready young people across demographics, they have proven to be particularly effective in helping disconnected young men and women-who presently have extraordinarily high levels of unemployment-make the transition to employment and education.
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Civic Justice Corps: Transforming Re-Entry Through Service. CJC addresses a major challenge facing our nation: far too many incarcerated and court-involved youthfail to transition to productive adulthood. Through CJC, Service and Conservation Corps successfully engage these young people in serving their communities, gaining academic credentials, developing skills for work and life, and securing sustainable jobs. CJC has demonstrated its ability to reduce recidivism, address essential community needs, and prepare young people to become productive, tax-paying citizens who serve as role models for others. Now it needs to be taken to scale.
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Service and Conservation Corps and America's Public Lands. Our public lands, America's great natural heritage, including our parks, forests, refuges, and coastlines, face three major immediate and critical needs:
• A multi-billion dollar backlog of maintenance work. $9 billion in jobs wait to be done
in the National Parks alone.
• Replacements for the upcoming wave of retirements within the public lands agencies--
for example, by 2012 a full38 percent ofthe Department of the Interior's workforce will be eligible
for retirement.
• The pressing need to create a more diverse public lands management workforce in this new generation.
The answer lies in using service as a strategy. America's Service and Conservation Corps have proven their effectiveness, both in getting the job done and in delivering land management professionals to the public lands system. An expanded Public Lands Service Corps, where young men and women serve to improve America's parks, forests, coastlines, and wild places, would help to diminish the backlog today-and build a diverse workforce for tomorrow.
Download the PDF
The Clean Energy Service Corps. In the past few years, America has experienced tremendous excitement about the potential of the green economy and its ability to provide avenues to success through employment and careers for low-income young people. America's Service and Conservation Corps know this promise can be realized-because they have engaged disconnected youth in service to community and the environment for decades. With new opportunities, as America faces the imperative to reduce energy use and costs, Corps are an experienced and proven model for green pathways to prosperity. This paper describes workforce needs in the green economy, and how Corps provide a solution that creates a viable green workforce while delivering equity and opportunity for all.
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Sally Prouty Blogs for Green DMV Report. This blog highlights Corps as a key model for creating pathways out ofpovertyand into employment. Sally describesCorps' ability to provide work-readiness through a service learning model that gives Corpsmembers the opportunity to make lasting impacts on their communities and the environment.
Read the blog! 
CorpsFeatured in Investment Publication. A recent spread in the Partners in Community and Economic Development askedWhat are green jobs, and what kinds of investments are needed to build this sector of the economy? A sidebar column featured green workforce development programs and there Sally Prouty explained that even the most solid programs can run into trouble if capital cannot be raised, thus highlighting the need for investment. As an example of a thriving program, the article also featured Limitless Vistas, Inc. (LA), which has successfully transitioned from start-up grant funding to a fee-for-service structure that is making the Corps sustainable. This sort of model, as well as one integrating a broader mix of key partnerships, was seen as central to creating the foundation for pathways into green jobs.
Read the article at Partners in Community and Economic Development or download the pdf.
Conservation Corps Answering the Call -- Cover Story in American Trails Magazine. The Summer 2009 issue of American Trails Magazine includes a cover story and three feature articles discussing ways that Corps can be utilized by partner organizations. Further, the issue includes an encouraging editorial that looks at the benefits for young people of volunteering in our nation's forest-specifically as Corpsmembers. Rounding off the issue is a book review of The Corps Network's recently published guidebook, Conservation Corps and Transportation: Making the Connection. For those interested in learning more about Corps' impact in our public lands, this issue is both primer and guide.
Online Magazine
Clean Energy Corps: Jobs, Service, and Opportunity in America's Clean Energy Economy. Americaas a whole is suffering through a deep economic recession, with job losses and extreme levels of wealth inequality, rising energy prices and energy insecurity, and an increasing scarcity of hope and common purpose. Americans are looking for solutions on climate, energy and the economy. To address these intersecting challenges, we propose a national Clean Energy Corps (CEC). The CEC will be a combined service, training, and job creation effort to combat global warming, grow local and regional economies and demonstrate the equity and employment promise of the clean energy economy.
Executive summary. Full text white paper.
Achieving Their Potential. "Achieving Their Potential," written by Sally Prouty and appearing in the Reclaiming Children and Youth Spring 2009 issue shows how Corps have made a huge impact in people's lives. This article features programming by the California Conservation Corps, Conservation Corps North Bay, Fresno Conservation Corps' Civic Justice Corps program, and Mile High Youth Corps, among others.
Full Text
Conservation Corps and Transportation: Making the Connection. Our purpose in this guide is to help more organizations, including Service and Conservation Corps, access this important source of funding for stewardship of our public lands and resources. We also want to acquaint Federal and State land managers with the benefits of employing Corpsmembers on a variety of projects. Finally, our goal is to help State resources and transportation agencies encourage the use of Corps in their funding programs.
Full text guide
In an article describing excellent “gap year” options for students between high school and college, reporter Rebecca Kern profiled Conservation Corps as a way for young people to continue learning, develop job skills and make a difference. The Corps Network's President & CEO Sally Prouty is quoted
Once a wildly undisciplined youth, William Brandt’s lack of direction was aggravated by substance abuse and a defensive, angry attitude. He got into trouble with the law.