THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was created during the first hundred days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Roosevelt envisioned the group as a program to both combat unemployment among American youth and help safeguard the environment. Young men between the ages of 18 and 25 were taken off the public-relief rolls by the Department of Labor and transported to locations nationwide where they worked on projects for the Departments of Agriculture and Interior. CCC workers received thirty dollars a month, with twenty-five of those sent home to their family. Enrollees were not only supposed to receive job training, but educational assistance during their time in the CCC camps. The CCC lasted until 1942 and you can still encounter their work in nearly every U.S. National Park and hundreds of state parks. The CCC restored 3,980 historical structures, and developed over 800 state parks, built 46,854 bridges and installed 5,000 miles of water supply. The CCC combatted soil erosion on over 20 million acres, stocked over one billion fish and transplanted 45 million trees and shrubs for landscaping and planted over 3 billion trees. And that's just the beginning — learn more about the CCC from the sites below. National Archives, The New Deal National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni

				JOB CORPS AND VISTA The idea of creating federal programs to provide employment and community service was revisited in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Authorized by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Job Corps and the Neighborhood Youth Corps were created to provide work, training and education for economically disadvantaged youth aged 16 to 24. Job Corps, like the CCC relocates its members to regional campuses during their enrollment. In its thirty years of existence more than 2 million Americans have gone through the Job Corps program. VISTA was created as a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps and sent volunteers into economically depressed American communities. Job Corps Friends of VISTA

				AMERICORPS The National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 created the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). The CNCS's mission was defined as "to provide opportunities for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to engage in service that addresses the nation's educational, public safety, environmental, and other human needs to achieve direct and demonstrable results." AmeriCorps was designed to aid youth, SeniorCorps was created for older Americans and the Learn and Serve program for students. Much AmeriCorps funding goes to state and local non-profit groups like the Earth Conservation Corps. AmeriCorps now oversees the VISTA program, in which volunteers serve a year in local programs. AmeriCorps also administers AmeriCorpsNCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) a 10-month residential program for 18 to 24-year-olds administered at five regional campuses. AmeriCorps Corporation for National and Community Service

				THE EARTH CONSERVATION CORPS NOW's program "Endangered Species" profiles an award-winning AmeriCorps program, the Earth Conservation Corps of Washington, D.C. Below, Corps member LM describes the reality-tv series that Corps members are trying to get onto public access television in Washington, and why they named it "Endangered Species": We got the idea to call it "Endangered Species," because when we started this program, we started to bring back the bald eagle to Anacostia 'Cause that's it's natural habitat, its natural home. And it's an endangered species. But also, the people who we employ here, which are young, African-American or minority people living in Southeast and around Anacostia, it's like endangered species too, because most of our life expectancy is only 25 because of the environments we live in. So, we're trying to bring us back too, bring us back to where we live and to be old people and not just getting killed or whatever, at a young age: 22, 23, 24, 25. Earth Conservation Corps

Sources: THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES; American Memory, the Library of Congress; AmeriCorps; Job Corps; National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni