The Gulf Coast Conservation Corps is a new Mississippi-based, non-profit Conservation Corps program designed to engage young people in service to their community and the environment. 

The Gulf Coast Conservation Corps builds upon a successful project of The Corps Network which deployed approximately 300 young people and staff from our nation’s 113 Service and Conservation Corps programs from Vermont to California to assist residents in the long-term recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 

The new Gulf Coast Conservation Corps will enroll “crews” or teams of young people (ages 18-24) in ten-week terms of service starting in October 2007.  While in the Corps, participants or “Corpsmembers” not only give back to the community, but also further their education and learn valuable employment, leadership and life skills.  The experience stresses hard work, personal responsibility, self-confidence, teamwork and stewardship of community and natural resources.

Corpsmembers will be meeting a multitude of community and environmental needs by:

• Restoring damaged natural habitats
• Constructing and maintaining trails
• Restoring historic buildings and structures
• Removing debris
• Renovating homes and structures
• Completing other projects identified by communities

The Gulf Coast Conservation Corps and our nation’s other Service and Conservation Corps are a direct descendent of the Civilian Conservation Corps that built parks and other public facilities still in use today. That Depression-era program employed three million young men. From 1933-42, the "CCC boys" dramatically improved the nation's public lands, while also receiving food, shelter, education and a precious $30-a-month stipend that literally saved many of their families from hunger.  Like the legendary CCC of the '30s, today's Corps are a proven strategy for giving young men and women the chance to change their communities, their own lives and those of their families.

The Gulf Coast Conservation Corps is funded in part through a generous grant from the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service.

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