MORE ABOUT GREEN CORPS

The mission of Green Corps is to train organizers, provide field support for today’s critical environmental campaigns, and graduate activists who possess the skills, temperament, and commitment to organize and win tomorrow’s environmental battles.

WHY JOIN GREEN CORPS?

1. Green Corps has been the nation’s most respected training program for environmental organizers for over 30 years.
2. We’re Green Corps (not equality corps, not health care corps, or some other corps) because the environment is the most important challenge facing our world today. We are laser-focused on the environment.
3. In Green Corps, you work on the most pressing environmental issues of the day – from saving our last wild places, to protecting our oceans, to reducing climate change pollution.
4. We’re organizers. We understand the power of public support to transform good ideas for solutions to environmental problems into reality. That’s why we’re not here to train you to be an environmental lawyer, scientist or engineer. We’re here to train you to organize and mobilize the kind of support the environment desperately needs.
5. We want to make the biggest positive impact we can for the planet. We work hard to create opportunities for you to learn the fundamental skills needed to run effective grassroots campaigns.
6. But it’s up to you to rise to the challenge. To make an impact, you need training. We provide top-notch, unparalleled training in the skills of organizing and advocacy to help you launch a lifetime career of impact.
7. Many people would pay for this kind of training. Because we’ve worked hard to fund the program, we're able to offer you pay and benefits while you learn and gain experience.
8. We challenge you. In Green Corps, we give you a ton of responsibility, the kind that pushes you outside of your comfort zone. That’s what it takes to learn the craft of organizing.
9. Green Corps packs a ton of experience into one short year. You learn organizing basics, including best practices that have stood the test of time. You also learn how to organize different constituencies in different contexts, including on a college campus, in a community and/or by running a campaign office.
10. This is important work and it’s hard work. It’s also rewarding and fun. In Green Corps, you meet amazing people among your classmates, your trainers and directors, and your campaign volunteers.

The Green Corps year is just the beginning. At the end of the year, you graduate and begin your career. Green Corps will help you find your place in the movement, making an impact on the most pressing environmental issues of today and tomorrow.

MORE ABOUT OUR NETWORK

Green Corps is part of The Public Interest Network, which operates and supports organizations committed to a shared vision of a better world and a strategic approach to social change.

Throughout The Public Interest Network, we believe that a clear vision, commonsense ideas, a fact-driven case for action, and the power of bringing people together are the necessary ingredients to any successful effort to solve society’s problems. Click here for things you should know about our network when you apply.

OUR BEGINNINGS: WHY DID WE START?

Following Earth Day 1990, a wave of environmentally-minded college graduates left academia looking for a way to put their values to work. As is true today, the environment was the most important challenge facing our world. There was no shortage of graduates who were passionate and ready to contribute to the environmental movement, but they were faced with a critical challenge: How do you launch a lifetime career of environmental advocacy and impact without any real experience?

In response to that question, PIRG launched Green Corps in 1992 as a field school for environmental organizers that would soon become the nation’s premier training program for this work. The program gave participants a solid grounding in the skills and theory of organizing and campaigning for the environment. But Green Corps has always been more than a school. In addition to unparalleled training, Green Corps gives participants experience running real campaigns for top environmental organizations, and it even pays participants to make a difference on critical environmental issues while they learn and launch their careers.

30+ YEARS OF GREEN CORPS

Green Corps has trained the next generation of environmental organizers since 1992. We’ve learned from new challenges, from weathering economic recessions and global pandemics, to evolving from landlines and fax machines to cell phones and Zoom meetings. Yet, the most important organizing skills haven’t changed: setting clear goals, crafting smart strategies, going where the fight is, and recruiting, recruiting, recruiting. As trainees and alumni, Green Corps organizers keep putting those skills to work, from campaigning for more renewable energy in states across the country, to leading the Million Solar Roofs initiative in California, to reducing deforestation across the globe. Check out where some of our alumni have applied their skills since graduating!

Green Corps’ first class (1992-1993)

MEET THE GREEN CORPS TEAM

Renee Wellman, Executive Director

Renee oversees operations, trainings, strategic planning and campaign outreach for Green Corps. Before moving into her current role, Renee got her start as part of the Green Corps Class of 2017 and later served as an assistant organizing director and organizing director for the program. She has directed field efforts on behalf of the Wilderness Society, the National Audubon Society and Toxic-Free Future, among others. Prior to joining Green Corps, Renee was a student activist and athlete at Northwestern University, where she studied social policy. She currently lives in Denver.

Click here to view our 2023 annual report.

Click here to view our most recent newsletter.

Marie Marx Strohm Memorial Award

After a varied career in education, radio and TV, Marie Marx Strohm founded Hummingbird Productions and became one of the premier producers of short documentary films for major environmental campaigns. Her work featured the International Mitsubishi Boycott, the Great Bear Rainforest Campaign, and the International Tar Sands Campaign, among other efforts. Marie received 10 Telly Awards for her video production excellence, the Gold Special Jury Award at Worldfest Houston in 2000 for the Great Bear Rainforest Video, and an L.A. Independent Filmmakers Festival Best Short Documentary Award in 2016 for her Napa Valley Campaign video. Marie died unexpectedly of a congenital heart disease in November of 2020. Working through Marie’s family, a close friend of Marie's made a generous gift to Green Corps to be spent to recruit new organizers and establish an annual memorial award in her honor. With this award, we celebrate the achievements of a graduate who demonstrates exceptional skill in the use of media in their advocacy work.

Sarah Forslund Memorial Scholarship

The Sarah Forslund Fund for Environmental Leadership betters the world through furthering the values by which Sarah Forslund lived her life: developing effective environmental leadership, supporting strong communities, and preserving our natural resources. Sarah was a member of the Green Corps Class of 1993. The Sarah Forslund Memorial Fellowship may be awarded each year to a Green Corps graduate who excelled and embodied the values of Sarah Forslund's work during their Green Corps year and continues their career with an organization within the Public Interest Network.

The Sedgwick/Torelli Family Scholarship

We are honored to announce that Robert M. Sedgwick and Helen Toreilli have graciously endowed a fellowship for an organizer in the Green Corps Class of 2023 who demonstrates an outstanding commitment to and talent for solving our most pressing environmental problems. This gift was made in honor of Green Corps graduates from the Class of 2013 who, 10 years after completing the Green Corps program, have made a profound impact for our planet, its people and our democracy.