$1.3M for Conservation Service, $3M in Ed. Awards
AmeriCorps Renews SCA Funding, Awards $1.3M to Support Conservation Service Programs, $3M in Education Awards for 2015
Wendy Spencer, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, today announced that SCA NH Corps’ AmeriCorps funding has been renewed for three full years through 2018. SCA’s national AmeriCorps programs also received funding for the final year of their three-year cycle. This additional funding will support SCA’s Veterans Fire Corps and the Youth In the Great Outdoors Stewardship Teams, and provide AmeriCorps Education Awards for more than a thousand SCA-AmeriCorps members nationwide.
Based at Bear Brook State Park, the SCA NH Corps has partnered with AmeriCorps and the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development for over 20 years. In that time, more than 600 Corps members have provided a combined 900,000 service hours in protecting and restoring New Hampshire state parks, delivering interpretive service to park visitors, and annually providing environmental education to 1,300 Manchester and Allenstown elementary school students – an entire generation of third through fifth graders. The Corps also engages Manchester high school students in an ongoing service-learning program.
AmeriCorps will provide the program with $360,000 in funding for each of the next three years.
Spencer also confirmed that SCA’s Veterans Fire Corps – an initiative that trains young military vets for careers in wildfire mitigation while easing members’ transition to civilian life – will receive $550,000 in 2016, with another $370,500 going to the Stewardship Teams, and $321,000 has been allocated for SCA’s Education Award program, bringing the total AmeriCorps appropriation to nearly $1.3 million.
In addition, AmeriCorps will provide nearly $3 million in Education Awards, enabling 1,400 eligible SCA particpants to serve as AmeriCorps members and receive Education Awards of up to $5,730 to apply toward student loans or future tuition.