MHYC Gone Dark

Bob Ridgeway – the man, the myth, the legend – rallied his troops yesterday for…(insert doomsday music here)…EVACUATION. Because today, is the day, We. Go. Dark.

In layman’s terms this means we’re moving out of our headquarters building for a couple months while it gets a (much needed) makeover. It means all of our headquarter phone lines will be directed to our other building and our internet will be down for a day or two.

But for Bob, Director of Operations, this relocation means enlisting our Corpsmembers to deploy our warehouse goods to our new cantonment down at 7th Avenue and Canosa Court. It means the detailed planning and implementation of a mass departure, a migration of computers, tools, equipment and bodies due south.

Because anyone that knows Bob – or has ever spoken to him for more than five minutes – knows that he has a way of speaking about everyday situations in terms fit for the best suited legion. A regular Friday afternoon spent doing logistic support with Bob translates to an arduous obstacle course full of hurdles possible for only the bravest of men and women. Which is why Bob assembled a posse made up of our finest Corpsmembers to help make the move to our new location smooth and problem free.

So, without further ado, we say goodbye to the old Mile High Youth Corps headquarters building. We bid farewell to the thick, foul liquid that drips from the ceilings. We give a grand send-off to the place of so many community meetings and debriefs: our beloved mezzanine. Adios crowded offices! Au revoir smelly kitchen! Auf weidersehen collapsing ceilings!

We salute our Commander in Chief, Mr. Robert Ridgeway, and all his hard-working determined soldiers that made this evacuation possible.

-Vanessa Notman, Outreach Alumni Mentor

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Thanks for Your Support at the 2010 Happy Hour & Silent Auction

Thanks to everyone who came out to support Mile High Youth Corps last Thursday for our Happy Hour & Silent Auction. The event was a great success, folks bid on great auction items, chatted over drinks and appetizers and Corpsmembers Brendan Michaud and Nickey Hale-Chambers gave a great speech about the top ten things they love about the corps. After polling their fellow Corpsmembers, Nickey and Brendan compiled a list of all the reasons they love working at Mile High Youth Corps. For those of you who missed it, check out what they came up with:

10. Education
The YouthBuild Corpsmembers really enjoy working in the GED classroom and even get to take a college-level class on Green Construction Practices at Red Rocks Community College where they learn about everything from saving water and energy to managing their finances better.

9. MHYC Staff
The staff at Mile High Youth Corps really encourages Corpsmembers to use our voices, think outside of the box and practice leadership skills.

8. Second Chances
MHYC focuses on our potential for the future and not on the poor decisions some of us made in the past. It’s a second chance at making a better life for ourselves, our families and our communities.

7. Community Awareness
Corpsmembers learn a lot about our community by working hands-on with many different groups. We get to improve the community’s perception of young people. Just the other day, one of the water clients receiving a new toilet shared that the crew’s professionalism and competency “filled her with hope for the future.”

6. Support
Being at the Corps is not just about a job. Staff members help us out in our personal lives with things like finding affordable housing, low-cost health insurance and day care. They make sure we’re prepared for our next step, whether that’s going to school, an apprenticeship or starting our careers.

5. Scholarship Money
All Corpsmembers who complete their terms with MHYC receive an AmeriCorps Education Award that we can use toward higher education.

4. Diversity
The diversity of the crews at MHYC makes each day fun, interesting and allows us all to learn about ourselves. It’s amazing how many different backgrounds come together to rally around one common goal.

3. Client Interaction
The Energy and Water Conservation Corpsmembers get to interact with community members on a daily basis. So far this year, over 1,000 homes have been retrofitted. Interacting with these clients has been incredible and eye-opening; we’ve gotten the chance to learn more about ourselves and the people who live in our communities.

2. Personal Growth
Working at Mile High Youth Corps really pushes you out of your comfort zone; you’re constantly encouraged to try new things. It’s such a safe environment for growth.

1. Service
We love giving back to the community. In our positions as Corpsmembers at MHYC, we get to make a difference everyday. In one year alone, the Water and Energy Conservation Programs saved over one billion gallons of water and conserved over 800,000 kilowatt hours of energy, The YouthBuild Corpsmembers built 89 affordable housing units and our Land Conservation crews worked on over ten miles of hiking trails and removed over 470 acres of invasive species.

So there you have it, straight from two of the 2010 MHYC Corpsmembers. Thanks for your support this year at the Happy Hour & Silent Auction – you helped make all this possible! We hope to see you next year!

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Summer of Service, Round Two

Last summer I knew I needed to get a job before heading up to college. I knew I didn’t want to work inside, especially fast food. When I was told of Mile High Youth Corps I immediately wanted to apply. What sounds more fun than only working four days a week outside in beautiful Colorado weather? Seeing youth in the company’s title I figured it would be easy. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The difficulty of the first few weeks was unprecedented to say the least. I hadn’t realized I was signing up to be mauled by Russian Olive trees. Nor had I realized that working ten hour days is excruciating on just 4 hours of sleep and no lunch. But it was in those thorny first weeks that our crew truly became a team. You get to know people on a deeper level when they are exhausted and fed up. I learned more about my crew members in just 3 weeks than I had about my best friends in 18 years.

Gradually the days seemed to be shorter, waking up wasn’t so awful, and the thorn pricks just seemed to be “all in a day’s work.” The rest of the summer was fantastic. I kept learning about my fellow crew members and to this day still talk to some of them daily. If you’re thinking about a summer job and don’t want to sit around all day in a kitchen, or if you want to get to know yourself better, or even if you just want to build lasting relationships with great people, MHYC is perfect for you. Every summer you’ll come back to Mile High (as I am) wanting to have the same summer job and the same great experience.

-Kris Amstutz, 2009 and 2010 Trailblazers Corpsmember

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National Youth Service Day – Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head

Well, Friday was National Youth Service Day where youth all over the country volunteer for a local environment or social service. On Friday we partnered with Denver Parks and Recreation and Greenprint Denver’s Mile High Million Initiative, a quest to plant one million trees by 2025 which in turn will remove 300 million pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere.

We arrived at our head quarter building with high hopes and a caffeine high that could send a bull into a frenzy. Already nature had decided to not go easy on us with a steady drizzle of rain, so we loaded up on pure “motivation” from our commander and chief Bob Ridgeway. We got to the park anxious to plant some baby trees, but by now the drizzle turned to sheets of steady rain.

Still, we split up, grabbed shovels, rakes, wire cutters, and pick axes to try to see which team would plant the most trees and yet the temperature continued to drop. We met our first tree, a willow, it was lying near a rapidly filling pool in a dug hole, that would soon be its home. We approached it as a team, throwing out ideas, tugging, snipping, pulling and then SNAP! the tree was free from the wire and burlap sack basket.

“Push on three” we said, “One! Two! Three!” We heaved, dug our muddy heels in and with a thump, the tree rolled into the hole. “Yes!” We cheered as the rain pounded against the ground and on our dark blue rain jackets. Our team was soaked, muddy, numb, yet we celebrated as we made our way to the next tree.

Eventually, soaked to the bone and plenty of trees planted, we headed to the vans. Each team was the same; smiles on all our tired, red faces. The trip back was quiet, exhaustion set in, but with a satisfying twist, our sponsor thanked us with a feast of barbecue fit for kings and queens — even the vegetarians had not been forgotten with their own veggie burgers.

As the rain turned to snow we, the Mile High Youth Corps settled back to enjoy our reward, knowing on the grand scale we had actually made a difference. Thanks Denver Parks and Rec!

-Ed Flores, Water Conservation Senior Corpsmember

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Happy Earth Day from Mile High Youth Corps!

“To see the fire that warms you or, better yet, to cut the wood that feeds the fire that warms you; to see the spring where the water bubbles up that slakes your thirst and to dip your pail into it; to see the beams that are the stay of your four walls and the timbers that uphold the roof that shelters you; to be in direct and personal contact with the sources of your material life; to find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to find a quest of wild berries more satisfying than a gift of tropical fruit; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wild flower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.”

John Burroughs

Don’t forget to come celebrate Earth Day with Mile High Youth Corps tonight at the Funky Buddha Lounge for our seventh annual Happy Hour & Silent Auction! Details here.

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ACLCs Learn Yet Another Acronym: LNT

A day in Boulder at lovely Chautauqua park sounds like a lovely way to spend a Saturday, but for the fourteen members of the AmeriCorps Leadership and Conservation (ACLC) program here at Mile High Youth Corps (MHYC), it was another day at the office. Well, perhaps not at the office, but it was a workday nevertheless, a workday filled with skits and hikes and mule deer sightings. Yes, life is good for the AmeriCorps members here at MHYC.

As Alumni Mentor for the conservation program, I was fortunate to be selected to accompany the ACLCs to Boulder. The goal of the day was to learn the seven principles of Leave No Trace (LNT), and furthermore, to be able to successfully facilitate trainings for the Summer of Service Corpsmembers that the ACLCs will be working with come June. Sponsored by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, the day’s activities included some hilarious skits: Mike Mullaley, portraying the overzealous camper, wants to build a five-alarm camp fire, while Andrew Kennedy, acting as his conscientious counterpart, convinces him a small, manageable mound fire is much more environmentally friendly; Collin Hoffman, as the no-holds-barred mountain biker, leaves a trail of wounded hikers in his wake on his reckless trek down the mountain.

Everyone learned a barrowful of new techniques and principles, and of course a myriad of unique LNT terms: the cat hole, using your elephant, broadcasting. In addition, the ACLCs got a chance to work on their facilitation and teaching skills, and did a wonderful job of being engaging and educational at the same time.

A special thanks to our facilitators Catherine, Sara and Sarah; and I look forward to seeing the ACLCs in action on their Summer of Service crews, spraying toothpaste far into the woods as they demonstrate their elephants to the Seasonal Corpsmembers.

-Steve Lynch, Conservation Alumni Mentor

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Summer of Service Blog Series: Chain Saws Need Love Too

If you’re looking to find yourself in places designed for postcard photos doing work designed to build muscles this summer, look no further. Mile High Youth Corps is still accepting applications for their Summer of Service Corpsmember and Crew Leader positions. Visit our website and apply here. I spent last summer dividing my time between a trail building and chain sawing crew, gaining skills and making friends – one special friend in particular of the winged variety. Check out my blog from last summer:

My new best friend is an Angel. With a wing disguised as a long, flat bar – lined not with feathers, but sharply filed teeth – the use of this wing is far from what would be typically described as angelic. A halo this Angel has not, but two circular knobs twisting open hungry for fuel. And this Angel doesn’t feed on fluffy clouds or the joy of making miracles, but rather thick, sticky bar oil and potent smelling gasoline. This Angel doesn’t live in the sky; instead she rests her weary head after a long day of work in a dark, dusty shed. Lucky number seven, my chain saw was christened her name back in the beginning of summer and has been by my side ever since, slicing through thick limbs and showing dense thickets who really reigns king. Rough around the edges and tougher than nails, still, as I’ve come to learn, chain saws need love too.

I have a degree in English Literature from Michigan State University. Before starting at Mile High Youth Corps in February, the extent of my use of tools ended with a pen and paper. My understanding of the word “machine” fell short after a laptop. But Angel has shown me the way, and in return I have learned to love her back. This Angel doesn’t need love in the form of hugs and kisses, she doesn’t want to cuddle or share one milkshake with two straws, never the less, she is very demanding of my attention.

Almost everyday Angel declares she’s had enough, demanding I take time away from cutting down trees to tend to her tired and worn chain, dull from cutting through thick bark and tree stumps. So I find myself, file in hand, working through each tooth making sure the angle of Angel’s cutting utensils are just right.

At the end of the day, Angel is dirty with the grim and grit of felling hundreds of trees, so I take her apart and with the help of air pressure, clean away the filth and leave her sparkling clean and unclogged of wood chips. And each morning, she thanks me. Angel takes down trees that seem impossible at first glance; she slices through meaty trunks as easily as a hot knife through butter and, ultimately, makes my job as easy as (sweating under a hard hat, doused in heavy gear facing gnarly forests) can be.

She may be an Angel in rare form, but halo dust doesn’t come in as handy as a sharp chain when you’re facing a tree that wants to remain standing tall.

-Vanessa Notman, Outreach Alumni Mentor

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Celebrate Earth Day with MHYC at our 7th Annual Happy Hour & Silent Auction

FOUR MORE DAYS TO GET YOUR TICKETS!
SUPPORT THE CORPS AND GET SOME GREAT DEALS!

Celebrate Earth Day at the seventh annual MHYC HAPPY HOUR & SILENT AUCTION, scheduled on Thursday, April 22, 2010 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the Funky Buddha Lounge (just south of downtown Denver).

Your support will help provide green jobs to over 175 young adults in this year’s Summer of Service Program.

With a $30 ticket, you’ll receive complementary appetizers, two free drinks and access to great deals on many fantastic auction items on a covered rooftop patio. Plus a $20 tax deduction!

BID! BID! BID!
Don’t forget your checkbook, credit card (VISA or MC) or some cash; here’s a small taste of what to expect in the silent auction:

-A High Efficiency Toilet and install from MHYC
-Gift cards from Whole Foods, CorePower Yoga and Samaeo Skin Spa
-A ziplining adventure and mountain get-away for four
-Premier Colorado Rockies and Broncos tickets
-Frontier Airline tickets
-Tickets and/or memberships to the Denver Art Museum, the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Performing Arts Center and the Denver Zoo

This event is always a best-seller, so get your tickets here now!

For more information about the Happy Hour and Silent Auction, contact Anna Black at annab@mhyc.net.

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Summer of Service Blog Series: Bison, Burrowing Owls, Bucks and Bald Eagles

You’ve got just a few weeks left to apply for a Summer of Service job with Mile High Youth Corps. Spend the summer outside building trails, using chain saws, making friends, earning money and helping conserve Colorado’s beatiful spaces. Apply for a day or camping crew member position here.

Check out current Conservation Alumni Mentor Steve Lynch’s blog from his experience on a Summer of Service crew last year:

The wind rustles the leaves of cottonwoods; crisp fall air fills my lungs. Ahead, a six-pointed buck ambles through the tall grasses. High in the sky, a bald eagle watches its young take flight. Elsewhere in the park, bison roam the grasslands, dodging prarie dogs and burrowing owls. Standing here, in the middle of the twenty-six square mile wildlife refuge known as the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, it is difficult to remember that I am mere miles from downtown Denver. More astonishing is the fact that this place was once home to the most polluted square mile on planet Earth.

As a sawyer on the Trailblazer crew, and then on the Fall Forestry crew, I have spent ten weeks at the Arsenal felling literally thousands of Russian Olive trees. I have seen bison, burrowing owls, bucks and bald eagles. I have seen two fully stuffed tigers, a rhineceros head, hundreds of snakeskin boots, and (yes) a belt made from the head of a cobra. (These items, and many more, are contained in the Repository, a warehouse filled with confiscated wildlife paraphernalia.) I have nearly stepped on a rattle snake, I boast permanent scars from the thorns of Russian Olives, and I’ve destroyed numerous pairs of boots, chaps, pants, gloves and eye protection.

But the experience has been once-in-a-lifetime. The Arsenal is an exceptionally unique place, and my time spent there has been rewarding. The work seems daunting, but to look across a field and see a stand of giant cottonwoods unencumbered by invasive, aggresive and unsightly Russian Olive trees is very rewarding. Helping restore the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to its original habitat has been eye-opening: the stark contrast between the ugly thickets of Russian Olives and the majestic beauty of cottonwood trees reaffirms the importance of the work that we do.
-Steve Lynch

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Water Conservation at MHYC

Hi my name is Ed Flores and I am on the water crew here at MHYC, I think the main point of this blog is to let the outside world get a glimpse of our little special universe here at Mile High Youth Corps.

The first point that I would like to make is that MHYC is not just a “job” for me, meaning that I don’t just come to work every morning, do what’s asked of me, get a paycheck and go home. For me, MHYC is more than a job, its a place where I wake up in the morning and say WOO! I get to go install High Efficiency Toilets (HETs) in low-income homes.

Now for some this might not sound like the most appealing job. Everyday I go somewhere new, I have no idea where I’m going until I am loaded in the van, sometimes the places I go into are not the most pleasant, maybe we encounter some grumpy clients after waking them up at 9 a.m. on their day off, sometimes the sewer gases feel like they are burning your eyebrows off, sometimes old toilet water splashes all over you, or maybe even a tool slips and falls down the pipe and the person on your team with the smallest arms has to fish it out… but the thing that makes all of this worth it is the immediate satisfaction of the client and their family seeing this brand new thing in their home, this wonderful gift of a new, water-saving toilet that we have given them free of charge.

Then comes the secondary satisfaction of the awesome knowledge that I have just saved gallons and gallons of water, and money for this family which in turn saves more water for me, you, Denver, Colorado, the USA, and ultimately the world… all with just an hour of my time in bad sewer gas, broken bolts, four-story walk ups, and a chunk of porcelain, and that is why I love Mile High Youth Corps.

-Ed Flores, Water Conservation Senior Corpsmember

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