National Civilian Community Corps

Run by officers of the United States Army Reserve, the CCC employed three million men aged 18 to 26 across tens of thousands of projects related to environmental conservation and natural resource development.

[6] By the time the program was discontinued in 1942, CCC members had planted more than 3 billion trees, built nearly 100,000 miles of fire roads, and erected drainage systems for over 80 million acres of agricultural land.

[7] In the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War sparked renewed interest in volunteerism and in the idea of using surplus military resources to solve domestic problems.

In 1992, a bipartisan group of senators including John McCain, Harris Wofford, Bob Dole, and Barbara Mikulski inserted provisions into the National Defense Authorization Act of 1993 authorizing the creation of a “Civilian Community Corps Demonstration Program” to test the viability of resurrecting the CCC model as a response to contemporary problems.

[8][9] The following year, President Bill Clinton signed legislation creating the Corporation for National and Community Service (also known as AmeriCorps), which absorbed the nascent Corps as well as other pre-existing programs such as VISTA.

Over the course of a typical program year, NCCC teams would complete between 300 and 400 projects focused on “environmental activities, education, human needs, and disaster response.” A majority of projects would be sponsored by nonprofit organizations, roughly a quarter by federal, state, and local government entities, and the rest by educational organizations and other institutions fitting the NCCC mandate.

Frequent sponsoring organizations included Habitat for Humanity, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, YMCA, and The Nature Conservancy.

Teams have been deployed in response to events such as Hurricane Sandy and the 2011 Joplin tornado, and between 2012 and 2019, half of all projects involved disaster services.

[28] At the start of the term, those chosen to serve report to their regional campus, where they are assigned to a team and trained in tool management, first aid, conflict resolution, and other skills.

Sponsors are required to provide teams with a work plan, on-site supervision, and lodging which includes showers and cooking facilities.

Projects vary widely in scope and scale, and the work can encompass a broad array of tasks and responsibilities such as tutoring schoolchildren, clearing away invasive species, building affordable housing, and helping community members file their taxes.

At least 80 of these hours must come in the form of Independent Service Projects (ISPs), which Corps Members seek out for themselves while in the field (Team Leaders are exempt from this requirement).

While serving, members receive room and board, uniforms, limited health benefits, and a modest, taxable stipend for other living expenses.

In 2009, then-Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour hailed NCCC’s response to Hurricane Katrina, saying that teams had rendered “tremendous service” to the Gulf Coast’s recovery efforts.

An AmeriCorps NCCC team on deployment in 2024 at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in California .
Example of an AmeriCorps NCCC FEMA Corps Team
A map of the four regions of AmeriCorps NCCC: Pacific, Southwest, North Central, and Southern.