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Over 100 Service, Workforce, Energy, Labor, Youth and Environmental Justice Organizations Join Together to Launch the Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps to Put Youth on Pathways to Resilience Careers

The nonpartisan collection of national and local organizations is working toward implementing a national service corps to address climate resilience and mitigation.

Washington, DC (January 9, 2023) — Today, over 100 cross-sector organizations announced the launch of the Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps (PCCC) to implement a national service corps to advance climate resilience and mitigation. The partnership includes organizations representing leaders in national service, workforce, labor, environmental justice and conservation, youth-serving organizations, and the growing resilience and clean energy industries, and represents national, state, and local organizations across the country.

The Partnership has identified the need for a multi-agency service corps to build on-ramps to good-paying conservation, resilience, and energy sector apprenticeships and jobs, address environmental justice, lower energy costs, and help communities improve infrastructure and disaster resilience. A resilience and mitigation corps has captured significant interest among federal, state and local policymakers over the past two years, stemming from persistent and popular support among young Americans.

The Partnership believes this corps should prioritize robust corps member benefits and professional development, equitable opportunities in communities that have been hardest hit by climate challenges, and projects focused on local community priorities including conservation, clean energy, resilience, infrastructure, and mitigation initiatives across rural, urban, and tribal areas. A successful resilience and mitigation corps should be built off of existing infrastructure, scaling up at national, state and local organizations including workforce development and labor partners. In this way, the corps could serve as a pre-apprenticeship pipeline into apprenticeship and career opportunities in the quickly growing resilience space.

Continued federal leadership to encourage interagency collaboration between Dept. of Labor, AmeriCorps, infrastructure, energy, and public lands agencies and to support sustainable funding streams will be necessary to move this effort forward. Leveraging national service and workforce programs is a major opportunity to achieve the resilience goals outlined in the recent infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act. 

The Partnership for the CCC is eager to work with champions at all levels of government to advance and implement this initiative, kick-starting the effort with a letter to President Biden requesting executive action from the White House and robust funding in the President’s FY24 budget request. The PCCC will also build off of recent action in states across the country that have created new state-based corps as well as existing networks of state service commissions, service and conservation corps, workforce, environmental justice, and registered apprenticeship programs. 

View the full list of PCCC members and other resources and publications on the PCCC webpage.

About the Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps
The Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps (PCCC) is a non-partisan collection of national, state, and local organizations working toward implementing a national service corps to tackle climate resilience and mitigation head on, while developing career pathways into apprenticeships and good-paying jobs for the next generation in the rapidly growing clean energy economy, disaster mitigation, infrastructure resilience, and conservation sectors.

About States for Service
States for Service is the privately funded, grassroots policy arm of America’s Service Commissions, the nonprofit association of the 52 state service commissions. The States for Service coalition works to reinforce the critical role state service commissions play in developing and advancing service in states to meet community and state needs. States for Service aims to influence policy, grant, and regulatory issues related to state service commissions, AmeriCorps State programs, and other state service programs such as AmeriCorps Seniors, AmeriCorps VISTA, and the Volunteer Generation Fund.

About America's Service Commissions
America's Service Commissions is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association representing and promoting the 52 state service commissions across the United States and territories with the mission to lead and elevate the state service network. State service commissions are governor-appointed public agencies or nonprofit organizations made up of more than 1,000 commissioners, private citizens leading the nation's service movement and administering more than 75 percent of the federal AmeriCorps funds to address pressing community needs.