Living with Fire Design Challenge

Reimagining

Forestry & Fire Careers

for Justice-Impacted People

This work was supported by Wonder Labs through a

Reimagining 2025: Living with Fire Design Challenge Award (2022-23 cohort).

This project, a part of the Wonderlabs Living with Fire Design Challenge,

brings together an interdisciplinary team of students, faculty advisors, and community partners to reimagine a workforce-led and community-centered transition to living and working with fire in California. The project asks how the Forestry & Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP) and similar workforce development programs can better serve justice-involved and systems-impacted people, especially considering the growing demands on the forestry and fire workforce due to the climate crisis. By facilitating visioning and listening sessions with justice-impacted individuals in the fire or forestry careers and related employers, the project identified common discussion points and recommendations for change on multiple levels. The project also builds on and contributes to ongoing initiatives of the Underground Scholars Research Cohort and the Institute for Research on Labor & Employment at UC Berkeley, as well as the Western Forest & Fire Initiative at University of Michigan.

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