About

2023 VIRTUAL INFORMATIONAL MEETING go here to view a recording

International Youth Conservation Coalition is a 501(c)3 non-profit program based in Edwards, Colorado. We provide local and global environmental conservation volunteer and leadership opportunities to high school students from Eagle County and surrounding areas. Teenagers are capable of extraordinary things if given the opportunity, our goal is to empower them to become local and global minded leaders with a strong sense of environmental responsibility.

Through this program, students meet once per month, from November through May. During these meetings students participate in leadership and team-building workshops, effective communication drills, research and give presentations on their host country and environmental projects, and prepare for their time abroad. Students also learn about and are trained for a local project in conjunction with local land management agencies and implement their project within their community prior to travel. Local projects vary and may consist of trail building and maintenance, river and land clean-ups, wildlife trail ambassador, and more. Students also participate in an hour-a-thon fundraiser that is held at our April meeting. During this fundraiser students help raise money that is used to purchase items that is donated to their project partners as well as off-set program expenses. Once the local project and monthly meetings are completed, students then travel with their team internationally for two-weeks to participate in an established conservation project in either June, July or August. We partner with global non-profits making a difference in environmental conservation and who rely on volunteers to accomplish their missions. Projects vary but typically consist of scientific data collection, wildlife research, release and rehabilitation, habitat restoration, reforestation, building and maintaining infrastructure, clean-up’s, and community outreach. Hands-on training is provided on-site at each location and each project has been vetted and personally participated in by IYCC staff.

2019/20 Student’s hard at work on their local trail building project
Some of our 2022/23 students completing their Wildlife Trail Ambassador volunteer shifts. WTA’s educate the public on the importance of staying off closed trails to help protect the winter habitat of deer and elk
Our students get real world, hands on experience in conservation. Here they are learning how to use a GPS so they can locate camera traps in the rainforest. After locating the cameras they sorted through the footage for the scientists which is used in various wildlife studies

We are focused on providing affordable volunteer experiences that are responsible, engaging, safe and high quality. Our projects heighten local and global environmental conservation awareness as well as cultural understanding through the skills and expertise taken by students to their host countries, and through the experience and lessons that students take back to their own country and community. While conservation is at the core of our program there is also a strong focus on leadership development, teamwork, self-reliance, communication, overcoming adversity and problem solving. Our previous students have said that their experience has been life changing in so many ways.

Visit our social media accounts to see in more detail what to expect on our projects, links via the icons at the top of the page

Meet the Founder

Getting youth excited about and working in environmental conservation has been a passion of mine since graduating Michigan State University with a degree in Natural Resource Based Recreation Management. After relocating to Vail in 1997 I began working at the Vail Nature Center leading both adult and youth nature programs. I then spent time working as a wildlife research field assistant for the US Forest Service in Minturn, Colorado before finally landing my dream job as Program Coordinator at the Eagle County Youth Conservation Corps in 2004. Throughout my seven years at the ECYCC I lead over 1000 Eagle County high school students on a multitude of conservation projects on public land ranging from wildfire mitigation, trail building and maintenance, to wetlands restoration and habitat rehabilitation. Funding was cut and in 2010 the ECYCC closed so I turned to the health care field first as an EMT and then finally as a massage therapist. While I was happy professionally, I felt a strong desire to work again with high school students, so I volunteered with Children’s Global Alliance in 2018 where I mentored 10 students throughout the school year culminating in a service trip to Tanzania in 2019. It was a powerful, life changing, and profound experience but I still felt a longing to return to environmental conservation so pulling from my experience with the Youth Corps and my recent time with CGA, International Youth Conservation Coalition was born. IYCC is a passion project that is the culmination of my love of environmental stewardship and empowering youth to be the change they want to see in the world. IYCC is now my vehicle to cultivate passion in students so they will take the environmental torch into the future.

~Jennifer Rose

Founder and Executive Director IYCC