Resilience Forward and RAYC Ahead in Charles County, MD

Resilience Authority of Charles County
Charles County Public Schools
The Student Conservation Association
Maryland Forest Service.

Our Resilience Authority Youth Corps (RAYC), hosted by the Student Conservation Association, engages underserved local high school students and recent high school graduates through year-round employment and career ladders for encouraging diversity in natural resource careers. Our RAYC members establish and maintain urban tree canopies, rain gardens, and conservation landscaping in overburdened communities characterized by the inequitable landscape cover of too much concrete and too little greenspace, resulting in stormwater flooding and urban heat islands. In so doing, the Project empowers underserved communities in Charles County by providing local youth-led opportunities to design, install, and maintain nature-based urban heat and stormwater solutions. Thus far, over 600 native trees have been planted and are being maintained at nine Charles County public schools that are in urban heat islands and generate stormwater runoff due to the high levels of impervious surface. The Project also provides career development opportunities in forestry, ecological restoration, and other natural resource careers; RAYC members aid in planning, goal setting, and skill sharing with foresters, urban planners, educators, recreational and public health professionals.

By planting and maintaining healthy tree canopies, urban food forests, and other nature-based heat and stormwater solutions, our RAYC members have a direct hand in improving their own communities’ climate resilience to extreme heat, urban heat islands, air pollution, and stormwater flooding. What makes this project “above and beyond” is twofold. First, it is designed to expose high school students to natural resource careers and reduce the systemic barriers to entry that minorities face in these professions. Second, it equips local youth with the skills and knowledge to give back to their own communities through climate resilience work grounded in environmental justice.