RFFC Project Coordinator, Equitable Workforce Development Initiative

Position Overview
Title: RFFC Project Coordinator, Equitable Workforce Development Initiative
Starting Hourly Wage Range: $26.75-35.75
Classification: Program Associate II
Benefits: paid holidays, vacation, health care, and retirement (see job description for more)
Schedule: Hourly
Hiring Timeline: Applications will be anonymized and accepted through January 29, 2024. First round interviews: early February.
Location: Remote; California-based strongly preferred
Special Requirements: Includes 10-12 weeks of travel within the state of California annuallyAbout the Watershed Center and the RFFC ProgramThe Watershed Research and Training Center (the Watershed Center) sustains healthy lands and healthy communities. What started in the early 1990’s as a local project to re-train displaced loggers and mill workers in Trinity County, California is now a vibrant nonprofit organization working locally, regionally (Northern California), statewide and nationally on a host of landscape conservation and community development projects. We advance place-based stewardship efforts at home, and support other local leaders as they organize, innovate and implement their own place-based initiatives.The Watershed Center has an annual budget of approximately $12M. We employ over 125 people at the height of our field season and across seven core program areas: three local forest, fire and watershed management and youth programs; three state-wide programs focused on biomass utilization, prescribed fire and capacity building; and a peer learning and action network that addresses fire adaptation and community resilience issues nationwide.
This position will be part of our statewide Regional Forest and Fire Capacity (RFFC) Program team. RFFC is supported by the California Department of Conservation, and this position has additional funding from CAL FIRE’s Wood Products and Bioenergy program. The RFFC program offers capacity building for organizations and individuals–including equitable workforce development, peer networking and connections to state agencies, conservancies and others working to advance land and fire management in California. This position will focus on offering equitable workforce development opportunities to under-represented and underserved community members in California, who we refer to as “priority populations.”Our Regional Forest and Fire Capacity priority populations work involves partnering with several local conservation corps throughout the state, and supporting their corpsmembers in exploring/entering the wildfire resilience career path. We do this through offering a four-module curriculum to corpsmembers, followed by a long-term mentorship and job shadowing opportunity. Two of the modules were developed in-house and the other two combine National Wildland Fire Coordinating Group (NWCG) courses (i.e., Basic 32 and S-212) and FEMA ICS courses. We contract instructors for a bulk of the coursework instruction.WRTC views the wildfire resilience workforce as broad and multi-faceted. Our priority population initiative is *not* exclusively focused on wildland firefighter training. While our programming does support individuals in obtaining basic wildland firefighter qualifications, that is only one component of our training. We expose our training participants to a broad gamut of wildfire resilience fields, ranging from Community Wildfire Protection Planning to tree nurseries to public policy/government administration to prescribed fire.