Smoke signals., March 01, 2003, Page 6, Image 6

Smoke Signals
NaturaL Resources Program Is Best In
Tribe works with the Oregon Youth Conservation Corps to give local kids their first work opportunity.
6 MARCH 1, 2003
State
By Ron Karten
From June through August each year since 1991,
the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde have worked
with the Oregon Youth Conservation Corps (OYCC)
to give kids a sometimes tough but valuable work
experience. The program also puts a couple of bucks
in participants' pockets.
Kelly Monk, a senior at Willamina High School,
has been in the program for the last two summers,
and he thought enough of the program to recom
mend it to three of his friends. Two got the job.
"It was pretty tough at times," he said. His crew
was "making trails wheelchair accessible, and clear
ing around small trees so they could get sunlight."
For last year's efforts, the Tribe will soon be
awarded the Frank Roberts Award from OYCC,
given to the best program of the year. All 36 coun
ties have projects, but OYCC Program director Ron
Adams credited the Tribe for "the variety, the diver
sity of the work, the community sponsorship... the
partnerships and collaboration."
"I would like the Tribe to be proud of this accom
plishment and of the commitment and generosity of
the Tribal Council to fund and support this program
over the years," said Kelly Doerksen, Natural Re
sources' Fish and Wildlife Coordinator, and also
Tribal coordinator for the OYCC program.
The Tribal Council has more than tripled the basic
commitment for an OYCC pro
gram. Usual OYCC grants, par
celed out county by county, fund
half a crew of six or seven. The
sponsoring organization funds the
rest. Last year, the Tribal con
tribution of $35,000 enabled the
program to accommodate 14
youth and two crew leaders.
The program grows every year.
Doerksen said that he is now
beginning to see applications from the younger sib
lings of former workers, but it is not because the
work is easy. A crew might have a forest trail to
clear, taking it down to dirt, providing drainage by
placing logs crossways in the dirt and sometimes
building small stream crossings.
Projects that impressed OYCC included "the miles
of trails, the checker-mallow enhancement. They
cleaned lamprey eels for the community. They did
some noxious weed eradication. And (they did) the
little things like Red Cross First Aid certification
that not everybody does," said Adams.
Doerksen in concert with biologist Jeff Baker de
velops jobs that each crew can complete in their al
lotted time. Sometimes it is an entire trail, but if a
trail is too long, Doerksen and Baker specify a por
tion of the trail so that the crew's work will end with
a sense of accomplishment.
Baker works with the crews
to make sure they are work
ing safely and efficiently.
Little problems like hornets
have to be considered in case
crew members have allergies.
And Doerksen and Baker de
sign projects with enough va
riety that the work remains in
teresting. Some work locations could be
a mile or two into the woods.
That requires packing in the
tools, the water, special
raingear for the day, lunches
and so on, but Doerksen said,
"hiking is nice compared to
what else they'll be doing (dur
ing the day)."
Crew members use hand
tools familiar to few hpme gar
deners. A Rhinehart (a shovel-
hoe hybred) is the most popu
lar, Doerksen said, but on any given day, the kids
could also use a McCloud (a hoe-rake gizmo), a
Polaski (a hoe-axe in one) or a Sandvik (looks more
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like a hacksaw at the end of a shovel handle). As
near as Doerksen and others at the Natural Re
sources storage shed one recent morning could tell,
the names refer to the people who developed the tools.
With these strange and powerful tools in hand,
it's usually an 8-5 day for the kids. If a day prom
ises to be really hot, the crews could start at 7 a.m.
"I impress on them that this is a job," said Doerksen.
"For a lot of them, this is their first work experi
ence. This is not like high school," he tells them.
"We don't have to keep you here."
Almost every year, he said, "at least one washes
out. They start to make the connection that this is
what it's like to have a job. I also make the point
that they can parlay this (work experience) into an
other job.
"OYCC tries to serve disadvantaged kids," said
Kelly Doerksen displays some of the tools used by the Tribe's award
winning Summer Youth Crew.
Doerksen, "but that fits for most any kid in this
area." The pay is $7 an hour for crew members and
$10.50 for crew leaders who generally are college
students. "We're going to try to hire every Tribal
member who applies," said Doerksen, "and we usu
ally end up with 5050 (Tribalnon-Tribal)."
Improving the program has been a continual ef
fort. "The crew lives or dies by the quality of the crew
leader," said Doerksen. "We've learned the qualities
that make good crew leaders." They include people
who are "self-motivated, gung-ho and relate to kids.
And they have to be extremely responsible."
The makeup of a crew also is important. While
Doerksen said that high school kids are often test
ing limits and "even the best kids will test you," he
has learned over the years that you can't put too
many "difficult" kids in the same group. "We look to
get a crew where the chemistry works.
"It's a nice recognition on our part that we've been
able to refine and improve the program to the point
that we received this award. Personally, we're ex
tremely proud but it works because the Tribal Coun
cil supports it for youth, not just Tribal youth but
all youth in the county."
Success has encouraged Doerksen to continue seek
ing new work opportunities for work crews. He also
seeks new funding sources "to maybe hire as many
kids as want jobs."
For the last two years the program had twice as
many applicants as the program could fund.
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