This toolkit was developed on behalf of America’s Service Commissions, primarily by Kif Scheuer and Annie Howley of Farallon Strategies, with support from Beth Gibbons and Prati Rosen. First we want to thank America’s Service Commissions (ASC), particularly CEO Kaira Esgate and Senior Policy Advisor Tyler Wilson, for the financial support and guidance as we developed this toolkit. We also want to express our deep gratitude to the commission representatives from 15 states who participate in the ASC Climate Working Group. This would not exist without your collective leadership in the national service field, your support to gather and organize this body of knowledge, and your engagement in ideation and feedback to refine it to this stage. Your experience is integrated throughout this toolkit and showcased in the Climate Corps Profiles.
We are especially grateful to the leadership and staff in four key state service commissions: Volunteer Maine, Serve Colorado, Serve Minnesota, and California Volunteers. You stepped up early to field statewide climate corps unique to your state’s goals and needs. We want to especially recognize your key climate corps staff — Kirsten Brewer (ME), Patricia Dowd (CO), Sharon Delcambre (MN), and Sunshine Swinford and Lindsay Righter (CA). Sharing your successes (and challenges) with us over almost two years has been instrumental. You have also offered a friendly and critical sounding board for our efforts to document what’s happening across the country. We are also grateful to some of the newer commission staff engaged with the working group from Washington (Katharine Swilley) and North Carolina (Megan Trawick and Whitney Compassini). Your perspective from the early stages of starting an initiative has been great to fold into this project.
We also want to thank a few individuals who provided substantive content to this toolkit. Our three guest authors: Brent Kossick from Service Year Alliance, Maine House District 127 Representative Morgan Rielly, and Patricia Dowd from Serve Colorado. Your individual stories and guidance help us diversify the perspectives included here. Additional experts who provided key content review and clarifications along the way: Robert Godfried from Next100, Shannon Zoet from Michigan Community Service Commission, Nathan Boone from the William Penn Foundation, and Dan Brown from The Corps Network. Thanks for helping us to ground-truth our stories.
A shout out to the state commissions and partners we’ve worked with on affiliated projects over the last two years: Serve Washington, Michigan Community Service Commission, Volunteer Florida, and Volunteer North Carolina / Conservation Trust for North Carolina. The opportunity to work closely with you on your specific initiative gave us access to a wealth of direct experience with diverse climate corps design and development processes.
Thank you to our colleagues across the national service field from AmeriCorps National, The Corps Network, and Service Year Alliance who provided national and agency level perspective and the occasional feedback loop that has further informed how we developed this material.
Finally, and most sincerely, we want to thank all the service programs (past and present) and their thousands of members who have worked for decades on the frontlines of environmental and community resilience issues. Whether you consider yourself a climate corps or not, the work you do and the examples you set are the backbone of what this is all about. It is our deepest hope that this work lends strength and support to all of you.
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A quick primer on climate change
What does climate change look like in your state?
What is happening with state policies or actions?
Assessing your state’s service landscape and gaps
Defining benefits of a state climate corps
Addressing traditional service program barriers
How to work with a commission and programs
Rural climate corps considerations
Integrating pre-apprenticeships
Joining state agencies at the table