Earth Conservation Corps (ECC) is a nonprofit youth development and environmental service organization located on the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington, DC. Since 1992, ECC has provided hundreds of unemployed, out of school youth ages 17-25 with hands on workforce and leadership development training, environmental education and media arts training. In 1992, a small group of unemployed youth from the Valley Green public housing community in Southeast Washington, D.C., volunteered to change their lives by restoring the Anacostia River. Motivated by the belief that their strong hearts, minds, and muscles could reclaim the Anacostia ,--America’s forgotten river — they banded together under an ambitious name, the Earth Conservation Corps. By pulling on waders and climbing into the polluted Lower Beaverdam creek those young people started an movement for the community youth to take back their River. Since then thousands of community leaders from the troubled neighborhoods near the Anacostia River — have become the cornerstone to the solution to the city’s twin problems of pollution and poverty. Our vision is that every young person in the Corps and throughout the District not only survives, but also thrives. Our collective effort on behalf of under-served youth is a down payment toward transforming our city’s greatest assets: our young people and our natural resources. With your help, our work to transform young lives along with the Anacostia River will endure for generations to come.