SCA joins with Youth Employment Program to get kids out into the field for the Summer.
Noa Otto is part of a group of 17-20 year olds that have enlisted with the Student Conservation Association for a summer internship. Right now they’re working on the University Lake trail, an Anchorage dog park that is surrounded by outlying bike trails.
“Today we are retreading trail, and then we’re focusing on putting gravel down on spots that are kind of hazardous with water,” says Otto. “And preventing people from walking on certain parts to help prevent erosion of the bank.”
“It’s a 10 week program. The first two weeks we camped out at APU and worked on trails at the Campbell tract. And now we have three weeks here working with the muni, and then we have a four week section of work where we’re in Spencer Glacier and we’ll actually be camping out there.”
Sara Boario works for the Chugach National Forest and helps run the Youth Employment Program responsible for assembling Noa’s summer crew.
Summer youth interns work on fixing an eroded trail
“Every year we have a range of opportunities for young people. Some of them are purely educational based, some of them are volunteer projects and then there’s these internships or crew career experiences like the conservations corps crews,” says Boario.