When Jaq Sarah French graduated from New York University with a degree in theater, she was unsure what she’d do next. The self-professed city girl said she’d rarely ventured outside Manhattan the last four years and was ready for a change.

She found that change, and last week French was in cargo pants and boots, raking at Vashon’s Lisabeula Park.

“I think I need to spend some time focusing on other people,” she said, taking a break from her task last Thursday. “All the time that people have given to me, I want to pay it forward.”

French is among a dozen young people who will spend two months on Vashon volunteering through the National Civilian Conservation Corp (NCCC), a branch of AmeriCorps. While NCCC groups have regularly worked at Camp Sealth, it’s the first time a crew will do projects island-wide. In the coming weeks, the diverse group of 18- to 24-year-olds will build a rain garden at Sunrise Ridge, care for fruit trees at the food bank, plant native trees along Judd Creek and maintain hiking trails at Camp Sealth, where they are also living for two months. Their full-time work will bring an estimated 3,500 hours of volunteer labor to local nonprofits and the Vashon Park District.

“It’s a great deal for the nonprofits, and it’s a great deal and for the whole island,” said Jan Milligan, who has coordinated the group’s work through Vashon’s Rotary club. “The whole island will benefit.”

The two-month service trip is somewhat of an experiment, said Milligan, Rotary’s community service chair. The former director of Camp Sealth, she saw the work that conservation corps volunteers have done at the sprawling camp over the years.

“I started thinking that there are so many nonprofits and the park district here that could benefit from this,” she said.

While conservation corps groups typically spend two months at a time in a single location — be it a park or a homeless shelter — Milligan and other Rotary members devised a plan where the Rotary club would sponsor a crew and send the volunteers to several places on Vashon. They scoped out more than a dozen possible projects, Milligan said, ultimately deciding on five that seemed most deserving and best fit NCCC’s mission. The club wasn’t sure if NCCC would go for their proposal, but the “moon and the stars all aligned” she said, and Rotary was approved.

“We were the logical sort of coordinating sponsor,” she said, explaining that Rotary is now scheduling the volunteers’ time on Vashon, and Rotary members have shown them around the island and provided some meals. Camp Sealth agreed to house the crew alongside another conservation corps group that is working at the camp. Each organization the group works for will cover the cost of any materials and provide supervision for the workers.

“This is huge,” said Tom Dean, director of the Vashon‑Maury Island Land Trust, of the volunteer hours the young people will put in at Judd Creek. The NCCC members will plant cedar and fir trees along the creek, Vashon’s largest stream, care for other native plants that were recently planted and beat back harmful invasives such as English ivy and blackberry.

Dean said the land trust typically hires crews to do work at its preserves during the summer months, but can’t afford to pay workers year-round, even though winter is the best time to plant. Right now the nonprofit is focusing on Judd Creek, where it is working to restore critical salmon spawning habitat and one day open a new hiking trail.

“We have a window of opportunity in the next month to get trees in the ground,” Dean said. “You can’t plant in the summer, or they’ll die. It’s really a huge benefit to get this flood of work right at this particular time.”

Milligan said the Rotary club tried to choose a variety of projects for the group, and several corps members said they were happy to travel around Vashon.

“We definitely feel like we will get to experience more of the island,” said Grace Healy, a member of the group.

The volunteers themselves are from all corners of the country and come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are high school graduates, and others are just out of college and not ready to settle into a job, Healy said. Some are looking for opportunities to travel, while some are hoping to gain experience that will look good on a college or job application. AmeriCorps is funded by federal dollars as well as money from foundations, corporations and other donors. NCCC volunteers get their room and board covered, as well as a $4,000 living allowance and a $5,730 education credit that can be put toward student loans or future college classes.

The volunteers will spend 10 months total working together, traveling among four different locations around the western part of the United States. Before Vashon, they spent six weeks working at a camp in Oakhurst, California, not far from Yosemite National Park.. Healy said that although some of them were skeptical about going to a rural island, everyone seems to be enjoying their time so far, and they’ve already taken trips to Seattle.

“The island itself is beautiful,” she said. “I don’t think we were prepared to live on the water every day.”

Milligan, too, said the experiment is going well so far. The team has opened up a trail, built a parking barrier and done significant clearing work at Lisabeula, a place she noted is one of Vashon’s most beautiful parks but is badly in need of maintenance. Staff at Sunrise Ridge, Camp Sealth and the fruit club’s orchard at the food bank are already preparing to put the crew to work in the coming weeks.

At Camp Sealth, a group of nine other NCCC volunteers is doing work on the camp’s trails, beaches and buildings during the same period of time, meaning there are more AmeriCorp volunteers on the island than ever. That group was so happy to come to Vashon that some of them cried and jumped up and down when they learned of the Camp Sealth assignment, said Jackie Bender, a member of that crew.

“It’s fantastic. We were all beaming, we were so happy,” she said.

Dean said the land trust has worked with similar crews from the Washington Conservation Corps, which is also under the AmeriCorps umbrella, and the staff tries to make the experience educational for the volunteers. They have followed up later with crew members, he said, some of whom have gone on to do research, work in academia or do natural resource management.

“Every year you help the next group of kids who are going to go on and take care of all the parks and preserves across the country,” he said.

As for French, she agreed that the experience is educational — from living and working with a diverse group to simply performing sometimes monotonous tasks like raking.

“Everyone is growing so much,” she said.