Pros
Really great for young people who want to travel, meet new people, spend time outdoors. Also good networking opportunities if you are interested in work in parks, trails, and restoration.
Cons
There were consistent misunderstandings between the organizations hiring ACE's labor and ACE leadership. Leadership is very young, and due to lack of maturity and the tensions of the job, leadership was generally very poor. To add on to this, some contracts expected corpsmembers to work hard labor everyday, and seeing how a lot of the kids who are corpsmembers are volunteer kids from middle class/wealthy families, it culturally and socially doesn't go over well. Many kids just don't know how to work, and to be honest, they are volunteers so it's not the most fair ask to begin with sometimes. Unpaid labor with no real adults around leads to drama, complaining, and even bullying. This puts additional tension on immature leadership. There are some good people, but issues seem systemic and can probably be fixed with some fundamental changes involving types of contracts, leadership, and compensation. A couple people we worked under gave me job offers/recommendation offers because they saw how hard I worked- so the opportunities for networking are there.
