Applications must be
received before October 1st.
Members of the SCA Massachusetts AmeriCorps program serve Massachusetts’s public lands from Martha’s Vineyard to the Berkshires each summer, and spend the winter providing environmental education to children at local schools in the western part of the state. The residential program, headquartered at Kenneth Dubuque Memorial State Forest in Hawley, MA, began its 20th year of service in October 2016.
Eighteen SCA Massachusetts AmeriCorps members begin their 10-month term serving at partner schools and education-related internships in Western Massachusetts during the fall and winter months (October – March). They engage students in science-based environmental curricula that create a broad learning context for students, improve their learning skills, and help foster an ethic of service and civic responsibility.
Eight more members are brought on in early March, for a 5-month term, bringing the total corps to 26 members. After trail training season in March, SCA Massachusetts AmeriCorps members provide much-needed assistance in improving the public access to and protection of the natural, cultural, and recreational resources of Massachusetts from April - August. SCA members travel across the commonwealth serving in small teams to complete more than 40 conservation projects per year, implemented in dozens of communities.
Members of the Massachusetts Corps receive or have the option to receive the following trainings or certifications:
Each year SCA Massachusetts AmeriCorps members spend five months teaching approximately 800 environmental education lessons to over 1,000 students. Our members also complete approximately 60 Conservation Service projects each year. Projects include new trail construction, invasive plant management, Universal Access Trail construction, school nature trails, historic site reclamation, and more.
Members receive full room and board, health insurance, a weekly living stipend, and an AmeriCorps education award.
Applications must be received by March 1. Once you have started your application contact [email protected] to have your application fee waived.
Interested in learning more about SCA Massachusetts AmeriCorps?
Contact: Nancy Perales [email protected] Phone: 413-339-6631
This month marks our first Hitch of conservation season. We’ve spent the last month and a half doing intensive training, everything from Wilderness First Responder training to how to build a rock staircase. While that’s been an incredibly enjoyable time on its own, the past ten days have been the first time we’ve been able to prove to ourselves that we can use these skills on our own.
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Here in Hawley the time is passing fast. The ten month members are already over their half way mark and the five month members are settled in, feeling at home. Being together everyday we are bound to have a ton of laughs and friendships that will only grow stronger.
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In the middle of April we held a week-long educational day camp called Hawley Nature Days, filled with interactive lessons and games. Hawley Nature Days is an event attended by local children in kindergarten through sixth grade, many of whom our ten month members taught during education season.
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As an open and inclusive community we like to hear what issues each member sees within the community that other may not have noticed. We do this through discussion topics of our Community meetings that we have on a weekly basis. This helps members understand the struggles that each individual member faces and how we as a whole can help and accommodate/compromise to make them comfortable with whatever the topic is and the what result will be.
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Last week marked the first conservation hitch for our group of 26 members. All of us traveled across the state to the beautiful Massasoit state park in Eastern Massachusetts. Many of us were not prepared for the changes in lifestyle that a hitch requires but embraced the changes to put the skills we had honed to good work. Whether our specialty skill was grip hoist or carpentry and whether an emergency in the outdoors came up, we were prepared to use what we learned the past month.
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