As we build our value-driven national brand, we will attract and inspire entrepreneurial leaders, project sponsors, community leaders, philanthropic investors, crew leaders, and enrollees to our mission, and our unique approach will help make a lasting impact on our country.
Page Summary
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- The National Service Leadership Academy, the first of its kind, will set new Crew Team Leader standards and empower Executive Directors to start local CCC corps nationally
- Unlike other Corps, our model is designed to produce consistency across all levels of CCC Enterprises
- The scope of work ranging from project type to scale and execution will be broader than any other corps organization in the field
- Our core values are the heartbeat of CCCUSA and reassemble those of the original CCC more than any other Corps
What makes us different — and more impactful — than other organizations in the corps industry?
Unprecedented TRAINING
Our National Service Leadership Academy, the first of its kind in the nation, will train and credential both Crew Leaders and Executive Directors. The NSLA will be intensive, comprehensive, and set a new national standard in the corps field.
NLA: Executive Directors
Our ideal Executive Director (ED) applicants will be experienced corps members and/or community leaders that show great promise and drive to create local corps Enterprises. Over time, we envision our ED trainees to have personally been a member of a CCC crew and have completed our Crew Leader training. Such experience will prepare the Executive Director trainees with an essential understanding of the corps program model, a key proponent in developing a successful and impactful local corps Enterprise.
To successfully launch, build, and lead their new Enterprise, EDs will have three primary areas of focus: 1) recruiting crew leaders and members, 2) obtaining fee-for-service contracts and philanthropic funding, and 3) developing the organizational structure. The ED curriculum will be designed around these topics to allow individuals to master each of these areas. Furthermore, EDs will be taught all CCCUSA operating systems, organizational standards, procedures, and guidelines.
A CCC Enterprise in NYC will of course engage a different demographic and take on different sets of public projects compared to a CCC Enterprise in Wyoming. Similarly, a corps designed for veterans would have different needs than say a corps focused on engaging homeless teens. Each scenario requires a different set of skills in addition to the foundational training noted above. To round out the training, EDs will be trained in groups related to the type of organization they will be launching. Group categories will be chosen and offered by CCCUSA, based on market demands, and will be taught by industry leaders and experts. Trainees will earn valuable insight and skills related to their organization, in addition to gaining a professional peer group that they can tap into for ideas and support going forward.
With all Enterprises operating consistently across the nation, people and skills will be transferable from one CCC Enterprise to another, cost efficiencies will be achieved, and evaluation and best practices shared will create the highest possible quality. Importantly, CCC Enterprises will be able to collaborate and unify quickly and successfully during times of natural disasters or other “all hands-on deck” emergencies.
Over time, we envision multiple regional NSLA training centers located strategically across the country to ease accessibility and allow for the graduation of cohorts on a constant basis.
NLA: Crew Leaders
Central to running a high-quality and effective corps is the hour-to-hour, day-to-day management of the crew by the Crew Leader. Crew leaders need to know the technical skills: how to swing a hammer and run a chain saw. They need to be masters of the paperwork such as payroll, labor laws, and IT interfacing with their home office. AND most importantly, they need to have the leadership skills, knowledge, and experience to manage a highly-diverse group of young people who suddenly find themselves in uniforms, working physically harder than they ever have in their lives, and needing to deal with others VERY different from themselves. The Crew Leader job is demanding to say the least.
CCCUSA’s National Service Leadership Academy will provide a three-step training program. The first level of training will focus on basic crew management and communication. The second stage will involve on-site project logistics and sponsor relations. The third level of training will be managing several concurrent projects from start to finish. All this will be under the supervision of highly-corps-experienced managers who have been doing this training for decades.
A credential will be given after the Stage Two training has been successfully completed. The Stage Three training is an advanced program designed for CCC-Enterprise staff who will be managing several crews in the field. Graduates will have automatic good-paying jobs within CCCUSA upon graduation, however, we anticipate they will be able to demand and receive job offers from federal and state agencies, other corps, and the private sector as they are time-honored traditional skills needed in any management setting.
Crew Leaders who have graduated and spent a year in the field and who want to lead their own CCC-Enterprise will be automatically eligible for the CCCUSA National Service Leadership Academy’s Executive Director program.
These highly-trained, mission motivated, entrepreneurial leaders will be a great force of change-makers. They will lead CCC Enterprises effectively and manage critical projects on the ground, and they will make the difference in the overall success for CCCUSA.
Effective CONSISTENCY
Current corps organizations in operation today act as independent entities, with each entity developing their own operating model, educational curriculum, standards, training, and so forth. As a result, most corps organizations are limited in resources and opportunities, limiting large-scale impact. Furthermore, with a wide-ranging array of different corps comes a loss of consistency in the overall corps industry brand as it stands at the national level.
Our franchise model — offering specific operations, guidelines, trainings, and structure, plus 24/7 support and ongoing guidance — will provide consistent and unified CCC Enterprises.
While projects will vary widely across local programs, CCCUSA systems and protocols will be strictly followed. This will assure the highest quality work, regardless of CCCUSA program location or staff. Our high standards and completed projects will help create a brand that public agencies and private clients can count on and respect.
Extensive SCOPE
While consistent in protocols, the franchise model will allow CCCUSA to be highly flexible in project execution, allowing us to respond to diverse needs across the country.
Each Enterprise, within its unique ecosystem, will have different opportunities for work projects — from performing traditional conservation work to building rain gardens, doing light construction or demolition, or operating a recycling facility.
CCC Enterprises will be able to take advantage of economies of scale, mobilize and grow quickly, and will be able to collaborate with other nearby CCC Enterprises that, alone, would not be able to tackle large projects, such as responding to natural disasters caused by flooding, tornados, or even oil spills.
Geographic focus of Enterprises can range from a single community to state-wide and even multi-state initiatives. For example, the Superior Watershed Trust in Michigan plans to roll out the CCCUSA Climate Corps program, which will eventually enroll thousands of young adults from hundreds of communities in every state adjacent to a Great Lake.
Life-Changing VALUES
It is our belief that our nation shares a core set of values: education, conservation, community service, personal responsibility, self-reliance, courage, and everyday leadership.
These core values are the heartbeat of CCCUSA. Everything we do is centered on teaching and instilling these values within the context of the team’s ability to accomplish high-priority, important work. This was the intent of the original CCC and given the scope and scale of our model, we seek to champion these values unlike anyone else has done since then. It is our belief that these values, when practiced daily, are the building blocks of a happy, healthy, civil, and prosperous life for individuals and the communities in which they live.
This clarity around values gives CCCUSA an enormous strategic advantage, as most of the current field has for years been confused as to whether they should be simply a workforce model, or whether they should include an educational component. The answer, of course, is that what has proven to be the most effective model is one in which real work informs personal values through practice, day in and day out.
Remember when…over 97,000 miles of roads were built and more than 3,470 fire towers were erected by the CCC.