Speaking at the Outdoor Industry Association’s Industry Breakfast before the start of the annual Outdoor Retailer Winter Market trade show at the Salt Palace in downtown Salt Lake City, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell outlined her goal to raise $20 million from private partners by 2017 to support the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps (21CSC).

The 21CSC, launched by the Obama Administration as part of the America’s Great Outdoors program, is a national collaborative effort to put America’s youth and veterans to work protecting, restoring, and enhancing America’s natural and cultural resources.

Already an initial group of nearly 100 organizations have been approved as 21CSC partner organizations that can provide work opportunities through supervised crews or small teams. In the coming months, the 21CSC National Council, made up of eight federal departments and agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture and Interior, will focus on recruiting additional member organizations.

Jewell first outlined her youth initiative in a speech at the National Press Club in October where she emphasized the need to bridge the growing disconnect between young people and the great outdoors. The goals of Interior’s youth initiative for the next four years include:


  • Play: Interior will develop or enhance outdoor recreation partnerships in a total of 50 cities over the next four years to create new, systemic opportunities for outdoor play for more than 10 million young people.
  • Learn: Provide educational opportunities to at least 10 million of the nation’s K-12 student population annually. In addition to welcoming students into nature’s classroom, we are developing and strengthening new online education resources, to reach more students.
  • Serve: Engage 1 million volunteers annually on public lands, effectively tripling the numbers we have now. We know that many more people are interested in volunteering at national parks, wildlife refuges and public lands, but there are often insufficient staff resources to coordinate them. In order to achieve the volunteer goal, we will place a renewed emphasis on volunteer coordination and management.
  • Work: To develop the next generation of lifelong conservation stewards and ensure our own skilled and diverse workforce pipeline, Interior will provide 100,000 work & training opportunities to young people within our bureaus and through public-private partnerships.  As part of this effort, we aim to raise an additional $20 million to support the youth work and training opportunities