Student Conservation Association
SCA and AmeriCorps share a common history: President Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). During the Great Depression, the CCC provided opportunities for unemployed young men to engage in meaningful work, mostly on conservation projects in the nation’s public lands.
In the 1950’s SCA’s founder, Liz Cushman, modeled her original Student Conservation Corps on the CCC, based on the idea that the hard work of young people could solve some of the most critical challenges facing our nation’s public lands.
Over the next forty years SCA became part of a movement of national service in America that included the creation of the Peace Corps, VISTA, and Youth Conservation Corps, and eventually, in 1994, the national service program that we know as AmeriCorps. Both SCA and AmeriCorps can trace their roots back to the CCC and that original, brilliant idea that regular Americans can help our country do amazing things through service.
