At Parks California, one of our key focus areas is supporting California State Parks by ensuring career development opportunities and natural resources training programs are more accessible to historically underinvested and underrepresented communities. In partnership with California State Parks, we are pleased to announce our second cohort of Career Pathways grantees, who will gain hands-on natural resource job training skills, mentorship, and exposure to career opportunities in parks. The grants are part of California State Parks’ greater effort to diversify its workforce.
This year’s Natural Resource Stewardship Career Pathways grants were awarded to five organizations that are working to break down barriers to broaden and expand access to job training and professional development opportunities to ensure parks will be protected for generations to come.
The 2023 – 2024 grantees will work hand-in-hand with California State Parks to advance climate resilience in outdoor spaces through trainings and work experience in invasive species removal work, habitat restoration projects, wildlife monitoring, and fuel reduction work. Additionally, the grantees connect participants to job networks and provide career advice and additional resources, such as equipment, wages, meals, and travel reimbursement.
“To face pressing landscape-scale challenges, we need to foster and strengthen an inclusive community of stewardship practitioners and leaders that represent diverse perspectives and backgrounds across the state,” said Becky Rittenburg, Resource Stewardship Programs Manager at Parks California. “These five grantee organizations each build a sense of belonging for their participants while providing meaningful work experience and training – equipping and empowering the next generation to join in the stewardship of parks,” she added.
Join us in welcoming this year’s five 2023 – 2024 grantees and get to know their work. And if you’re curious about how the experience went for a participant in the inaugural cohort, read about Nina Omom’s internship.
