Now in its 12th year and under new leadership, a revamped edition of Borderlands Restoration Network’s Borderlands Earth Care Youth (BECY) program is ready to deploy ten borderlands area youth in a variety of work-study settings as sustainability and ecology interns.
Up to now, BECY has been offered as a six-week summer internship experience. This year, under new director Jordan Sene, the program’s schedule and content have been substantially updated. Instead of working five days a week for six consecutive weeks during June and July, the interns will begin their BECY assignments during the latter part of the school year and finish before the end of June. The interns will see increases in both their hourly rate of pay and the number of weeks they work in the program. Their new pay rate is $15/hour and the program will run for a week longer than it has historically.
In late March, they will work with BRN’s watershed restoration crew installing rock structures that help prevent soil erosion and restore native streams. Saturdays in April will find the interns working in the Patagonia Arts Center’s Arts Ecology Program, during which they will design and create a mural on structures at Deep Dirt Farm. (Deep Dirt was recently acquired by BRN from its founder, Kate Tirion.)
During the final weeks of the school year and through June, the interns will visit ranches and environmental organizations in Southern Arizona to learn about a broad range of sustainable living and ecological principles and practices. The list includes The Canelo Project, Sky Island Alliance, Tumacácori National Historic Park, T4 Ranch, Las Milpitas Farm, Watershed Management Group and The Nature Conservancy’s Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve.
The BECY interns will assist Friends of Sonoita Creek volunteers in monitoring the health of Harshaw and Sonoita Creeks. They will also tour South32’s Hermosa Mine site and learn of possible environmental degradation consequences of mining operations in a briefing presented by the Patagonia Area Resource Alliance.
The interns will work from 7am-3pm, do field work in the morning, break for lunch and then spend the afternoon in structured educational activities or working on their personal reflection projects. The interns will present their projects during a graduation ceremony to be held in the Tin Shed Theater on June 27. The event will be open to the public.
Sene said finding the money to support the $100,000 BECY program year after year is challenging. This year’s program is funded entirely by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control Foundation.
Sene brings considerable BECY-related experience to her BRN position. Following her graduation from Rio Rico High School in 2018, she accepted a BECY internship that summer. As it was for many of the program’s nearly 200 graduates, BECY was a transformative experience for Sene.
“I always wanted to be an educator and I had decided to follow in the footsteps of my favorite teacher and become an English teacher,” Sene said. “But BECY changed my perspective, so I changed my major from English literature to sustainability and ecology.”
While pursuing her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Arizona State University, Sene worked part-time while attending classes and full-time in the summer assisting former BECY director Caleb Weaver.
Sene recently received a Master’s in Sustainable Solutions from ASU. On January 1, she was named BRN’s Educational Programs Manager, putting her in charge of not only BECY but all BRN educational programs.
For more information about the BECY program, email Sene at jsene@borderlandsrestoration.org.