ROSE VALLEY : Youth Group to Use Ex-Detention Facility

A nonprofit youth group has signed a five-year lease with the U.S. Forest Service for a three-acre facility in Los Padres National Forest to use as a quasi-boot camp for teen-agers this summer.

About 100 youths will make a former detention facility in Rose Valley their home during the work programs run by Concerned Resource and Environmental Workers, an Ojai-based group supported primarily by donations. The two six-week summer programs are aimed at boosting self-esteem while maintaining the environment.

The site used to house criminal inmates but was closed in 1992 due to budget constraints, Sheriff’s Department officials said.

CREW approached the Forest Service nearly two years ago with a proposal to turn the facility into a summer camp for youth.

“We’re trying to get these kids involved in something positive,” CREW Director Paul Starbard said. “It’s not only to get the (environmental) work done. . . . At the same time we use the forest as a tool for the kids.”

Teen-agers will earn $5 an hour repairing trails, cleaning campgrounds, launching wildlife projects and undertaking numerous other tasks.

“It’s a real responsibility- and maturity-building experience,” said Leslie Jehnings, a Forest Service official who has worked with CREW since its inception four years ago.

Although CREW, which operates year round, has offered summer programs in the past, this is the first year the group will operate from a central facility, Starbard said.

The program already has received several applications for the summer program from local and Los Angeles teen-agers, Jehnings said.

The first of two sessions starts June 20, Starbard said.