Washington Parks & People : DC Green Corps

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The DC Green Corps

The DC Green Corps, based at the new Marvin Gaye Community Greening Center in the Watts Branch sub-watershed of the Anacostia River, will provide a city-wide gateway to 50 different green career tracks in urban and community forestry and forest-based ecosystem and watershed restoration. Helping under-served sub-watershed communities across the city, the Green Corps job program will focus on environmental justice, sustainable native reforestation, riparian buffer planting, invasive removal, and green controls of urban systems, such as storm and sewer flows.The Green Corps and Center will develop a referral system to help participants connect to jobs through a wide range of agencies, professional and trade associations, trades, professions, and industries.

The Green Corps and Center will collaborate with other agencies including the DC Department of Parks and Recreation, DC Department of the Environment, the UDC Cooperative Extension Service and Agricultural Experiment Station, DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, the National Park Service, National Arboretum, and all relevant local universities and technical schools and training programs, with a special focus on youth populations and others with challenges for employment, including older people, disabled groups, and ex-offenders. Washington Parks & People, DC's award-winning largest grassroots land reclamation force, has managed over 50,000 volunteers in the Watts Branch stream valley alone, and has planted over 3,000 trees, focused on impaired, under-served, and heavily impervious watersheds of the city.

The Green Corps and Center will be a model Environmental Justice initiative to link inner-city communities into lasting green jobs, and to spark lasting stronger investment in using urban and community forestry to meet vital community needs. By demonstrating the economic, environmental justice, and public health impacts of massive stream valley reforestation, we will set the stage for substantial out-year investment for sustained expansion of urban forestry in DC and beyond.