“I propose to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work…more important, however, than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work”
– President Franklin Roosevelt
Page Summary
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- The CCC, a 12-year federal program during the Great Depression still stands as America’s most honored work, education, and conservation program
- Education was a core focus of the CCC, from literacy to construction
- 1970’s, the federal Youth Conservation Corps enrolled hundreds of thousands of youth
- CCCUSA will be a on a scale that is aligned with the original CCC
The Original CCC
The time-tested model of the original Civilian Conservation Corps is our inspiration and our guide. By understanding this history and evolving the model, we can unleash its potential to address the challenges of today.
For the past 85 years, our nation has benefitted from the lasting work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a federal program that gave three million unemployed young men valuable work and an exceptional educational experience during the height of the great depression, lasting from 1930 to 1942. It was a major component of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and quickly became the most popular of all the New Deal programs.
The Civilian Conservation Corps left behind an untold number of parks, trails, forests, and recreation areas on public lands across the country. More importantly, the CCC offered a sense of purpose and provided opportunities to millions of Americans during one of our country’s most challenging times. In the end, the CCC instilled within a generation of young Americans a set of personal values — education, service to their community, conservation, self-reliance, and personal responsibility — values that guided them the rest of their lives.
A Model Developed by Chance
President Roosevelt needed to employ millions quickly. The question was how to organize such an effort? There was a logical choice: the U.S. Army. The military took in hundreds of thousands of “enrollees” and provided shelter, meals, and all the other necessary non-work needs. While in camp, enrollees were expected to follow most military customs, which resulted in a clear structure, hierarchy, and sense of discipline.
Outside of the camps, enrollees performed work in our parks, forests, and other natural areas.
A commonality was education. In the camps, enrollees were expected to work on and obtain their high school diploma (at the time, the law only required an 8th-grade education). Many CCC enrollees went on to college, with some receiving advanced degrees — which helped shape their lives and their immediate families, as well as the generations that followed.
In the field, education was also present and all-encompassing. They learned how to run machinery and construct foundations. They built roads, ski areas, dams of all sizes, planted over a billion trees, and the list goes on. In the process, they developed deeply-held conservation values that informed their lives and opened up the “environment” to millions of American citizens for the first time — effectively creating the foundation for the recreation industry we have today.
Other values such as self-reliance, personal responsibility, and practical leadership skills — critical qualities needed to get the work done — also played an important role for the rest of their lives.
Despite its popular support, the CCC was never meant to be a permanent agency. By 1942, with World War II underway, priorities shifted and Congress voted to end the program.
Resurrection in the 1970s
In the seventies, a new federal Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) program was created, enrolling hundreds of thousands of teenagers every summer for a decade.
While there were some significant differences from the original CCC, the basic and most important elements remained: small diverse teams doing important conservation work, under highly-trained leaders, with a comprehensive educational component. Young people walked away changed. They took with them strengthened values like the CCC alumni before them.
Unlike their counterparts from the 1930’s, which were in highly segregated camps, the YCC crews integrated our American demographics. Enrolled members learned, many for the first time, that although we may have different color skin, levels of education, wealth, and more, we have much more in common. Lifelong friends developed from those that previously would have never shared even a school lunch.
Modern Era Corps
In 1979, a new US President ended the federal YCC program. However, many young passionate alumni individually created the current corps field what we have today: corps that are organized as independent non-profits. These corps share some similarities: basic program model, value sets, and work project organizational structures. However, unlike their predecessors, most modern era corps are located in urban areas, and the kinds of work completed are broader than ever before.
Our Plan to Accelerate the Corps Model
CCCUSA is our effort to reimagine the success and grand impact of the original CCC. Acting as a national corps accelerator, the first of its kind, CCCUSA will strive to be the platform of opportunity and the beacon of hope and support for countless American lives and communities, similar to that of the original CCC.
Like the original CCC, we will enroll hundreds of thousands of young people, eventually millions, aged 16-23, across the country. Our plan for rapid expansion and widespread impact is more aligned with FDR’s vision in the 1930s than the model of any other corps organization in operation today.
CCCUSA will instill the same core set of values promoted by the original federal program, but harnessing the power of entrepreneurship and the private sector in a significantly more robust way than what we have seen over the past 30 years. Regardless, the results will be similar — young American citizens will learn critical civil values, job readiness and leadership skills while long-lasting and impactful work is achieved around the country, in both urban or rural communities.
Remember when…eighty-six camps enrolled 8,500 women into the CCC before Congress eliminated the women’s section in 1937.