ASHLEY, PENNSYLVANIA (Dec. 12, 2024) – The Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR) this month welcomed Mark Jones, a Luzerne County resident who will serve with the well-established nonprofit for one year as an AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) member administered through Conservation Legacy’s Stewards Individual Placements Program.
Mark is one of 18 service members chosen to participate in the first class of the newly established “Energy Communities AmeriCorps,” part of a national effort to revitalize coal communities.
EPCAMR is the first organization in eastern Pennsylvania’s Northern Appalachian Anthracite Coalfields – and currently one of only two nonprofits in the Keystone State – to host a service member as part of the innovative Energy Communities initiative. Other service members will be based at nonprofits in communities from West Virginia to Wyoming.
“It’s a small world here in Northeastern PA. Six degrees of separation seem to always come into play. Mark’s resume and experience over his career were a perfect match for EPCAMR when I developed the Volunteer Activity Description (VAD) for the Community Development Coordinator position that he will fill,” said EPCAMR Executive Director Bobby Hughes, who is Mark’s supervisor.
Jones
“He’s joining us at just the right time,” Bobby added. “He understands and has lived in the coal region long enough to have seen many of the same positive reclamation, restoration, and diversification of economies on the landscape of our former abandoned mine lands that was once dominated by a single industry: anthracite coal mining. He’s covered EPCAMR projects at his previous job with The Times Leader newspaper and was familiar with our work, and my instinct told me that his affinity and background working with many nonprofits that I was already very familiar with was a huge determining factor in my selection of him for the volunteer position.”
Mark will serve through Dec. 3, 2025. He and his fellow service members will strive to leverage and bring resources to their respective coal communities to spur job creation, support economic revitalization, and address environmental degradation.
The service members will focus on projects that build capacity of nonprofit organizations, local economic development districts, and other organizations. They will carry out activities such as conducting community needs assessments, organizing public meetings, assisting with grant writing, providing outreach on tax incentives and other federal resources to support economic development, increasing public awareness about training and employment opportunities, and educating residents about hazards associated with abandoned mine lands.
“I am privileged to be a small part of this much-needed effort to transform coal communities that historically helped to power our nation’s growth and development but, which, sadly, still bear the scars of those intensive mining activities,” said Mark, of Kingston.
A Pennsylvania native, Mark graduated in 1991 from Penn State University. He formerly worked as a print journalist in places including suburban Phoenix, Arizona, and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He started a civic journalism project at The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre to strengthen the area’s nonprofit safety net; the project was later recognized with a public service award by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Most recently, Mark was employed by The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education, based in Scranton.
AmeriCorps developed the Energy Communities AmeriCorps project in partnership with the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization (Energy Communities IWG), which serves as a hub for federal coordination and stakeholder engagement to spur economic revitalization and support workers in distressed energy communities.
The Energy Communities IWG has so far launched seven Rapid Response Teams to align federal resources in communities experiencing recent or imminent economic downturns. AmeriCorps members will work closely with these Rapid Response Teams to engage local government, business, and nonprofit stakeholders in each energy community.
Energy Communities AmeriCorps is funded through a unique multi-agency public private partnership with support from members of the Energy Communities IWG – the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, the Appalachian Regional Commission, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Conservation Legacy, the project’s sponsor, is a longstanding AmeriCorps partner with extensive experience working in coal communities. Over the past 22 years, Conservation Legacy has engaged more than 1,200 AmeriCorps members in supporting economic development and revitalization in energy communities in Appalachia and the Intermountain West. These members have secured $41 million in grants and in-kind resources, recruited 100,000 volunteers, trained 16,000 community members in water quality monitoring, and improved 3.2 million acres of land.
EPCAMR, which got its start in 1995, encourages the reclamation and redevelopment of land affected by past mining practices. This includes reducing hazards to health and safety, eliminating soil erosion, improving water quality, and returning land affected by past mining practices to productive use, thereby improving the economy of the region.” For additional information, including how you can get involved, visit epcamr.org.
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