Green Corps

CONTACT:

44 Winter Street, 4th Floor
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 426-8506
www.greencorps.org

Cindy Kang, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

Green Corps was founded in 1992, to address a strategic need in the environmental movement: leadership development. What makes a leader -- natural talents? Knowledge and skills? Or both? Green Corps' method has been to identify natural leaders and then to train them in the environmental field. Working with other environmental leaders, they designed the Environmental Leadership Training Program to teach young people the issues, skills, and strategies they need to be successful and effective environmental leaders. In the first year they received 1,000 applications for a handful of positions.

Every year, Green Corps teaches nearly 20,000 youth, through publications and programs about environmental problems, and actions young people can take to solve them. Green Corps also sponsors 50 interns at environmental organizations. The organization has graduated more than 120 leaders -- 85% of whom are using their training in organizations like the Appalachian Mountain Club, MASSPIRG, Boston Lead Action Collaborative, Massachusetts Water Watch, and the Toxics Action Center. The program is still growing; in 2002 it trained 30 aspiring leaders. The trainees, in turn, recruit and involve hundreds of student and community volunteers in environmental projects, teaching them environmental issues and in some cases leadership skills as well. Green Corps offers a way you can invest in the "social capital" of the environmental movement.

(2001: NATURE: Environmental Education)