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Recent Graduates

FORMER CORPS MEMBER:

Stay Connected

Your desire to give back to our natural and cultural landscape is part of what led you to MCCC in the first place. MCCC continues to offer you opportunities to contribute to the greater good of our County and our environment.

You can:

Find a Job
Organize a Service Project …….link to projects
Become an MCCC Ambassador
Update your contact information - let us know where you are and what you're doing!
Join our annual volunteer day event………..link to volunteer form
MCCC relies on our connections. There are over 1600 MCCC program alumni.
KEEP IN TOUCH…….301-929-5557

My name is Jason Cole. I want to tell you what the Montgomery County Conservation Corps program has done for me and a lot of others like me.

Before I joined the Corps, I wasn’t doing much. High School and me just didn’t get along. I had skipped classes almost every day from the the 10th grade until I dropped out in the 12th grade. I was working at a Subway Sandwich shop when I felt like it. When I didn’t feel like working (which was a lot of the time), I would hang out with friends all day, not coming home until early morning to my Grandmother’s house where I was living. I worried my grandmother a lot she had tried everything, and was about to kick me out.

One day a friend told me about the Corps. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I figured I had to do something.The GED program and the training looked like what I needed, but getting to the Corps by 7:00 a.m. and working and studying until 4:30 every day looked like a big price to pay. But so did getting kicked out with no place to live. I joined in July of 2002.

Since then, my attitude and my life have turned around 180 degrees. I became a Crew Leader, then a Senior Crew Leader and the Corps Foreman. I have earned my Maryland State High School Diploma, Basic and Advanced Program Diplomas from the Corps, my class ring, and AmeriCorps Education Grants worth $4750.00 to get further training. When I testified before the Senate in Annapolis. I must have said something right, because Senator Grosfeld saw me after the session and said to call her – that she would like to write a letter or recommendation to the Ford auto mechanic program.

I am now married, have my driver’s license, my own car (which I have fixed up), and have finished a course in small engine repair at the corps.

When I graduated from MCCC, they helped to place me in an apprenticeship program. I have completed the two year apprenticeship program offered by the Washington Area National Automobile Dealers Association (WANADA) and funded by Ford Motor Corporation. I am making a good salary as a certified ford motor automobile mechanic.

The other guys in the Corps have much the same story I do. Some have made it like I have, others have quit or been fired. Some of these have come back a second time, with a different attitude, serious about “getting down to business”. Some are out of jail on a waiting list to get into a shelter and maybe a training program. I’m proud to tell you what I have accomplished because of the Conservation Corps.