Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers Crew Leader Training is taught by several RFOV Crew Leaders who have gained their experience through work with the Forest Service, BLM, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC), and RFOV. These people will work with you to teach you the techniques and to share their knowledge and experience of crew leading.

Crew Leader Training Class

There will be two two-day sessions in 2010. The first will be Saturday & Sunday, May 1-2, at Wulfsohn Open Space in Glenwood Springs. The second is Saturday and Sunday, June 26-27, at Thompson Creek, near Carbondale. Depending on which weekend works for you, you can sign up by clicking here. Use your leadership skills to ensure volunteers enjoy a quality experience, and ensure the work is done to the highest construction and safety standards.

Each round of crew leader training consists of a two-hour indoor class introducing the trainees to RFOV's mission, goals and crew leader program; the season's projects; how projects are run; leadership basics; and a technical preview.

The field session demonstrates and practices the project day and teaches trail construction techniques.

To graduate to crew leader, all trainees should demonstrate good skills and knowledge in these areas: leadership and team building; safety; RFOV and technical skills (see attached objectives). The crew leader role is extremely important to RFOV because the crew leader becomes the primary representative of RFOV to the project day volunteer. We need our crew leaders to be positive, knowledgeable and enthusiastic volunteer leaders.

Our Instructors will apprise you of your status after any training event you attend. We will have an instructor working with you on any project you attend until you graduate to crew leader. Since RFOV needs more Crew Leaders to conduct our projects, we will encourage you to get to crew leader status as quickly as possible, but we also want you to be comfortable in this role. Take your time, your involvement and contribution to our mission of stewardship for our public lands is appreciated.

For those of you attending our training as part of RFOV's Adopt-A-Trail Program or as an outside agency, please bear with us as we cover RFOV's internal operations. Also, please take advantage of opportunities to improve your leadership and trail skills. Our short course is intended to give one a good start to becoming a Crew Leader.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, we are using VOC's Crew Leader Manual as our own. There are obviously going to be some differences with their program. Generally you can substitute RFOV for VOC in the text. The sections on their crew leader program and their project team positions are the most different from ours. The chapters on safety, leadership, tools, and technical are perfect for our needs.