Goals & Needs

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FIRE Foundry's goal is to establish a community-oriented wildfire prevention workforce by providing job training and skills development for underserved, underrepresented, and underfunded community members in Marin County and the surrounding Bay Area. The FIRE Foundry is a career pathway consisting of four programs (Education, Work Experience, Professional development and Training and Support Services program) and designed to support community members through career exploration in the fire service and strengthen competitiveness for future employment as firefighters or related careers in medicine, public safety and environmental preservation. This program will help the County of Marin meet the following goals:

 ● Increase the diversity of the fire service in Marin County and beyond given the current lack of sufficient diversity in fire services locally, state-wide, and nationally;

● Provide an accessible, sustainable-wage career pathway for young adults that do not currently have knowledge of or access to these options; and

● Grow the number of exceptionally qualified firefighters in the region and the state to meet the urgent demand for more fire prevention, mitigation, and suppression in the region, state and Western United States.

 

A typical day in the life of a fellow could include organizing recruit trainings: reaching out to potential trainers, sharing training schedules and calendars with recruits and project partners, attending project partner meeting bi-weekly or it could be leading a specific education project from volunteer events to attending fire career expos and High Schools to inform the community of Foundry and other programs to support a growing diverse work-force and fire preparedness.

 

The increase of wildfires in California has driven a need to increase a trained workforce, as well as, increase preventative education and fuel reduction. Educating the community, and young adults who are joining the fire service will improve wildfire preparedness and prevention. As we grow our new fire workforce, it is also important to create and foster spaces the help underserved individuals build skills and reduce barriers to also join to protect their communities.

 

FIRE Foundry aligns with GrizzlyCorps mission of increasing community resilience, helping combat climate disruptions, and fostering professional development for the Foundry recruits as well as the GrizzlyCorps member.

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Capacity Building Projects

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1)  Building training calendars and engagement for the Foundry recruits. Foundry recruits join the program at different stages of the career exploration journey- some Foundry recruits join as Entry recruits (they are new to exploring the Fire Service and will take classes at COM) while other join as Advanced recruits (have their EMT). For recruits the Foundry provides both soft skill and hard skill trainings. Trainings include options such as rope rescue, S-130/S-190 as well as mock interviews and building personal budgets to save. The GrizzlyCorps fellow will assess trainings from the past cohorts, help reach out to trainers, plan calendars and add trainings that could be helpful to the recruits. Along with this, the GrizzlyCorps fellow will continue to build and explore what an Alumni network can look like by creating engagement activities or emails. Better trained recruits help them have more opportunities when they leave Foundry as well as help create a better trained workforce to combat wildfires.

 

2) The GrizzlyCorps fellow will also be responsible for helping create awareness of this new program, spreading fire preparedness education to high schools and help coordinate a few volunteer events to bring community members and Foundry recruits together to help foster a safer community. Since the program is only in its 3rd Cohort- spreading awareness to those in underserved communities will open up more pathways to explore fire service as a sustainable wage career option. Increasing engagement with the youth in the county on fire preparedness helps the overall community become more empowered to help their families stay safe. Leading community action events such as volunteer days- offer events to the community to engage with the fire service and build safer communities.

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Organizational & Community Highlights

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Both the FIRE Foundry and Marin County FD are dynamic, innovative, engaging and fun spaces. The FIRE Foundry is a program run through Marin County Fire Department and with that many firefighters come by to mentor, train and engage with the new recruits. The building is often lively and many different projects can be happening at the same time. The FIRE Foundry itself is both a living space for recruits, the Work Program's hub as well as the community space for Foundry. In a single hour- you could see recruits making lunch, interns working on projects and vans being cleaned or moved for project work. The Foundry and Marin County Fire are all comprised of very engaged hardworking individuals that try to continuously better serve their community.