Growing up in the 1970s, I was unaware of the National Park Service, the system we refer to as the "national parks," or the job possibilities that included a career as a national park ranger. Friends of Saguaro National Park spent a lot of time this year working to inform younger generations in southern Arizona of those possibilities.
In 2015 alone the friends group, working with the National Park Service, invested more than $100,000 to launch its Next Generation Range Corps program. With grants received from the National Park Foundation, the National Environmental Education Foundation, and the Outdoor Foundation, the friends group worked to recruit, train, and mentor its first class of Next Gen Rangers. This first group of 14 students included eight women, and seven minority students (either Hispanic, Native American, or Asian). Throughout the year this group was educated not only on Saguaro National Park, but on career opportunities within the National Park Service.
Each Next Gen Ranger is selected by the park, but paid through an Independent Contractor Agreement with Friends of Saguaro. Each intern has a designated mentor, and all the Next Gens share a broad range of training experiences that provide valuable skills in NPS history, wilderness, resource management, safety, interpretation, outreach, and visitor protection. This broad-based experience allows the participants to learn more about their own interests and narrow their career goals. This unique partnership between the park and Friends of Saguaro is empowering young people to apply their knowledge, skills, and abilities to truly make a difference in the park -- while simultaneously allowing them to gain new knowledge, skills, and abilities to pave the way to a future career.
Long-term, the goal of the program is to not only have a workforce at Saguaro that is reflective of the area's demographic makeup, but also to see the park remain relevant to the area's population.
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