On the heels of moving into a larger facility and winning a grant from Sonoma County to manage vegetation on fire-prone land, one Santa Rosa-based nonprofit is gearing up for a busy season of serving the planet and those in need.
With a mission to develop youth and conserve natural resources, Conservation Corps North Bay offers both natural resource management and conservation services in Sonoma and Marin counties while providing on-the-job training to underserved youth interested in conservation.
CCNB CEO Angel Minor said services involve paid training for green jobs along with wraparound support to ensure participants’ basic needs are met. The nonprofit offers them a starting pay of $18.25 per hour, working 32 hours per week, with opportunities to gain $2 raises.
“Then we help them when they’re ready to leave our program to find a job — hopefully something that can lead to a living wage in the future,” she said.
Trainees are between the ages of 18 and 30. At program enrollment, about 92 percent are low income, 84 percent are unemployed, 85 percent are Hispanic and 64 percent don’t have a high school diploma, Minor shared. As part of the program, participants have opportunities to learn English and complete credits for graduation if they previously dropped out of school.
“Most of them are going into those environmental green jobs, so they could go work for county parks or Sonoma Water or they could work for (California) state parks,” Minor said. “They’re learning trail building and fuel reduction, how to manage creeks and flood prevention.”
She said the nonprofit also has a fire foundry program in Marin County for those interested in the emergency response field.
CCNB developed from Marin Conservation Corps, first launched in the early 1980s when flooding and other natural disasters in Marin County spurred a need for environmental preservation work. Founder Rich Hammond additionally saw a need to connect youth to nature, which laid the groundwork for an organization that simultaneously offers natural resources management and paid job training. About 15 years ago, CCNB expanded to serve Sonoma County.
“Then as we continued to expand and we were recognized at the state level, we brought in our Zero Waste program, and so we get direct funding from CalRecycle every year,” said Minor.
From the smallest little bit of weed pulling to the littlest bit of litter abatement, everything can make a difference.
Manuel Lopez, CCNB staff supervisor
The Zero Waste program provides waste collection management to recycle items including bottles, cans, tires and oil.
For Manuel Lopez, who went through the training at 19 and later returned to become a supervisor on the CCNB staff, the program changed the entire trajectory of his life.
“When I first started with CCNB, I was fresh out of high school. I would say I was very hard-headed and prone to anger,” he said. “Through the help of my supervisors – Matt Fowler, Joshua Montgomery, Jasmine Padia — I really felt they helped me transform from that hot-headed young adult into somebody mature enough to be able to go out into the field with five to eight other people that might be in a little in-between stage in their lives and help them.”
Now 21, Lopez manages crews of anywhere from three to 14 each day, taking them to various locations to complete work assigned to them from sponsors — the people or companies who have contracted with CCNB for various jobs.
“(CCNB) really helped support me to become a better person in general — just being able to understand how we impact the earth and how our job impacts everything around us and everything in our environment,” he said. “From the smallest little bit of weed pulling to the littlest bit of litter abatement, everything can make a difference.”