Winner of the Governor's Award for Environmental and Economic Leadership

The C.R.E.W. Ojai, California

What Makes The C.R.E.W. Unique and Strong?

• The C.R.E.W. program is replicable, particularly in rural wilderness/urban interfaces.
• The C.R.E.W. is one of the very few employers who provides actual paid employment for 14 to 17 year old youth.
• The C.R.E.W.’s environmental program addresses groups frequently overlooked in this area e.g. poor and working class communities and their children.
• The C.R.E.W. pioneers innovative approaches to environmental issues e.g. chaparral bio mass reutilization, and “green” fire protection services.
• The C.R.E.W. is run like a business. It has diversified its service lines and revenue streams, established credit lines to address government contract cash flow issues, generated steady, sustainable growth and consistently increased fee for service income as a percentage of business. Over 80% of C.R.E.W. revenues go directly to program services.Over 50% of C.R.E.W. revenues come from getting paid to do work.
• The C.R.E.W. produces “on the ground” results that are readily measurable.
• The C.R.E.W. consistently creates local, multi agency and group collaborations and empowers local projects & organizations.

Results:

The C.R.E.W. infuses over $150,000 each year into local communities in the form of youth and adult supervisor salaries. However, the results of other activities such as the savings accruing to the fire prevention services performed by out youth for the Counties of Santa Barbara and Ventura, the cities and towns of Fillmore, Santa Paula, Montecito and Ojai, and the U.S. Forest Service, are only measurable within the context of a catastrophe.

Despite this powerful impact on communities, the C.R.E.W. has only three full-time staff. Since our inception, we have employed and trained more than 1,400 male and female youths from the Ojai Valley and Ventura, the Santa Clara Valley, the Frazier Park area and Santa Barbara County. Approximately 70% of C.R.E.W. participants are disadvantaged or at risk. The C.R.E.W. is co-ed with girls composing 12% of our field crews. Participants are 45% Hispanic. In 2008 we provided over 11,000 hours of paid part-time employment to youth and their adult supervisors.

C.R.E.W. youth have refurbished over 550 miles of Forest Service & private trails restored several campgrounds, planted hundreds of trees, re-vegetated several hundred thousand square feet of wild land & removed substantial invasive plant acreage. We also provide fire prevention services to the Cities of Ojai, Meiners Oaks and Santa Paula, as well as U.S.F.S. and Ventura County Fire Departments. To date we have built fuel breaks on 7 sites on the Ojai Fuel Bed and 2 sites near Frazier Park. We have also provided hundreds of tons of reusable biomass to area farmers, residents & agencies.

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