With a saw and a shovel, a now-defunct Great Depression-era volunteer corps passed a legacy of civic service and environmental conservation to its much younger counterpart Friday, honoring volunteers past and present who believe in fighting for the environment.
In a ceremony jointly celebrating the 10th active year of the Massachusetts chapter of the Student Conservation Association and what would have been the 74th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps – a Depression-era program that employed millions of men for public works projects – state officials declared March 30 CCC Day.
“The CCC built the backbone of the Massachusetts State Parks system, and we are forever grateful for their inspiring efforts,” said Conservation and Recreation Department Commissioner Priscilla Geigis in a press release provided at the event.
Former CCC members passed a two-man saw, representing the transition of the group’s heritage to a new generation, and a shovel, representing the manual labor and service the SCA has performed since its inception in 1997, to SCA representatives as symbolic gestures, Geigis said.
Today, the SCA — one of several groups that spawned from the CCC — assigns members to either an educational season, held between December and March, or a conservation season, which lasts from April to August. The former sends volunteers to underprivileged elementary schools in western Massachusetts to raise environmental awareness among students, while the latter performs physical labor in various projects throughout state parklands, including trail construction and rehabilitation, erosion control and campground improvement.
SCA volunteer Sara Falkoff, who said she found the group while searching the Internet for environmental service opportunities, worked with pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students.
“It’s a really neat responsibility, working with such young, impressionable minds,” Falkoff said. “Learning is one of our goals.
“Serving with what we’re learning, improving and helping someone else at the same time,” she added.
SCA Program Director Jonah Keane said the group has two major goals.
“The first is to create the next generation of conservation leaders [and] develop core members, and we’re here developing them,” he said. “The second is developing a stronger understanding of the natural world and more access to state land.”
“We have national recruitment throughout high schools and college campuses, but it’s really for anyone who has the time – when folks are free,” said coordinator Molly Knoll, acknowledging that although the SCA is open to all volunteers, it is more suitable for students than adults because the program requires members to live together away from home on a weekly $60 allowance.
Knoll suggested students take a year off between high school and college to volunteer in the program, calling it the “ideal” period for service.
Sen. Edward Augustus (D-Worcester) said the CCC laid the foundation for today’s state conservationists.
“I’m proud to be a part of celebrating the spirit with which these great organizations were established,” Augustus said in a press release. “These men, in their youth, made a profound impact on our State Parks. Massachusetts will be forever indebted to them.”