Youth Get Hands-on With Nature
Each summer hundreds of youth volunteers across the Credit River Watershed take action to help restore and nurture nature. Alongside CVC staff and many community partners, youth volunteers work on projects such as removing invasive species, taking care of newly planted trees and shrubs, planting wildflowers, stream restoration, electrofishing, trail maintenance, litter pick up and more.
Our Conservation Youth Corps (CYC) program provides local youth with unparalleled opportunities to participate in hands-on environmental stewardship activities. Registration for the program opens April 25. Youth volunteers learn STEM-related job skills, meet environmental professionals and discover their strengths while stewarding natural spaces in our cities and conservation areas. With a variety of experiences organized over one week in the summer, youth learn real skills that carry them into the workforce and beyond post-secondary school.
One project CYC youth will be working on this summer is stream restoration on Fletcher’s Creek in Brampton. Working alongside community partner Ontario Streams, youth will spend time naturalizing the stream bank to prevent erosion and enhance habitat for fish and other wildlife.
This project location is within the Fletchers Creek Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plan (SNAP) area. The SNAP was developed to address local environmental challenges and community interests. Youth have been helping to create a healthy and diverse landscape in Fletchers Creek SNAP for many years. To date, over 700 youth have planted and maintained 2,054 native trees and shrubs, removed invasive species and removed litter from parks like Chris Gibson, Fred Kline and Cowton Family Meadow.
Last year marked the 14th anniversary of the Conservation Youth Corps (CYC) volunteer program. It would have been the 15th year, but the pandemic put projects on pause in 2020. We were able to work with youth volunteers once again last summer with modified programming to ensure the health and safety of all volunteers, staff and partners. To date, we have engaged over 25,000 youth in environmental education and stewardship training.
Sign up
Registration for CVC’s Conservation Youth Corps program will open April 25. Visit cvc.ca/cyc to sign up.
By: Keren Bromberg, Senior Coordinator, Community Outreach