Addressing Climate Change Through Our Nation’s Service Corps
Traditional Trades Advancement Program Year 1
As part of its work assessing how federal service corps programs are expanding their efforts to care for the environment and diversify their workforces, CECE is studying the Traditional Trades Advancement Program (TTAP), a youth service project funded by the National Parks Service. This research aims to analyze TTAP through survey data collected from applicants and participants, partner interviews, and observational site data.
In the past year, CECE has conducted fieldwork, going on-site to 24 different National Parks, including Yosemite, Sequoia, Fredericksburg, Martin Luther King, and Cape Lookout, to conduct interviews and administer two sets of surveys.
These surveys were conducted with both program applicants and program participants, who hailed from all over the country, as illustrated by the map shown right. Following the analysis of the applicant data, a TTAP applicants report was produced, revealing interesting results, with an upcoming participants report on the horizon.
Other interesting findings from the applicant report:
- Only 14% of applicants knew a past or current TTAP participants
- 54% of applicants cited skills training as a motivating factor for applying to TTAP
- 84% of applicants consider the environment when making purchasing decisions
Moving into year two of the study, CECE plans to conduct the same surveys, with the hopes that meaningful insights can be pulled from comparison across two years of data, and perform comparative analyses with Scientists in Parks, another National Park Service program.
