The California Conservation Corps (CCC) will be 35 years old this year. It is going strong and in fact is poised to expand. Its experience is most relevant to a debate in California workforce circles today: what are the needed job skills in the emerging California economy, and how young Californians can best achieve these skills.  

The Corps was founded by Jerry Brown in July 1976, who described it as "a combination Jesuit seminary, Israeli kibbutz and Marine Corps boot camp." It sought to bring together California youth of various backgrounds, income levels and races. The youth would be placed in residential settings, outside of urban areas, and put to work on conservation tasks that were real work: fire containment, trail construction, stream restoration, tree planting. In this work, the youth would contribute to the California community, and also develop the skills to navigate in the job world and in life.

The CCC thrived over the years in its discipline, daily structure of physical exercise and education, and emphasis on the hard, outdoor work associated with conservation and emergency response projects. It drew revenue not only from direct state funding, but also from contracts with other state, local and private agencies for conservation tasks.  In the current fiscal year, the CCC deploys around 1400 participants at any one time, from twenty-seven locations.   

Further, the CCC has given rise to a movement of local conservation corps program in California, starting with the Marin Conservation Corps, East Bay Conservation Corps, and San Francisco Conservation Corps in the early 1980s and spreading throughout the state. Currently there are thirteen local conservation corps programs in California, with 1200 California youth enrolled. Most of the local corps programs are linked to charter schools, enabling participants without high school degrees to obtain them, and those with high school degrees to improve literacy skills.

Martha Diepenbrock was the first director of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps in 1986 and has been involved in the Corps movement since its inception. She describes the interplay of service and training as follows: "The dual mission of the corps, youth development and the accomplishment of work, is fundamental to the success of the corps. The work is the vehicle for youth development. Youth enter the Corps intending to serve. But, it is in the service that they grow and find confidence and direction."

The CCC and local Corps in California repeatedly have come out on top of studies of various youth training programs over the years in reduced arrest rates among ex-offenders who are participants as well as high employment outcomes among all participants. The skills they are teaching-work orientation, work confidence, reading and problem solving skills--are precisely those that employers value. For years, California employers have been telling workforce practitioners that for most jobs, they are not looking for specific vocational skills, but rather work orientation and general skills.  

Which brings us to the current workforce debate on youth skills, and particularly the role of vocational training. Of course, vocational training is one of the youth training strategies. But former Governor Schwarzenegger often made too much of its role. Programs that provide work experience in a disciplined setting, or that teach general education skills, or that combine both, can have superior longer term employment outcomes to training in a specific vocation-especially as the emerging job world in California will see even greater movement among jobs and occupations.

Judge Anthony Kline for thirty years has been at the center of the corps movement, its development and sustainability, and continues today to be a main proponent for the CCC and local corps. When Michael Krisman and I saw him in Sacramento last week, he spoke of the corps' role in the future, its continuing relevancy for the state's youth, particularly the most at-risk youth, and potential new directions for the future.  The CCC and local corps do need to continue to evolve in the next years; while they do not depart too far from their classic values, as summarized by former CCC Director B.T. Collins,  "hard work, low pay, and miserable conditions".