Friends of China Camp

With wintry weather upon us, thoughts of outdoor picnics mostly head for the back burner. That means it’s the perfect time for our maintenance team to focus on repairing and replacing the park’s hard-working outdoor grills. 

Okay, grills might not seem like the most earth-shattering topic. But in truth, there’s a surprising backstory to these stalwart park items. 

It turns out that outdoor grills like ours could help individuals get back on track after run-ins with the law. At a workshop in the Sonoma County town of Forestville, production and repair of grills, picnic tables, benches, fire rings, gates, and other items used at parks like China Camp, happen as part of the county’s Probation Industries program.

 “These products are currently made in conjunction with our work-release program,” explains Melissa Segura, Division Director for Sonoma County Probation Industries. “It’s a jail-alternative program for adult offenders that the courts have ordered to do work release rather than spend time in jail.” In turn, the products are sold at a reasonable price to Friends of China Camp and other organizations and people in the community.

 The goal is to teach life skills that can help individuals get back into society in healthy, productive ways. “We had a gentleman here a couple of weeks ago who had never used the table saw that we have in the workshop,” explains Director Segura. “The opportunity for him to use it meant he learned a skill. It gave him a real passion for something new, and he keeps asking to come back to learn more.”

 While offering new skills—and hopefully opportunities—for these adults is admirable, the program was historically aimed to bump up the skills of juvenile offenders. Until COVID hit in 2020, the Forestville facility was the site of the Probation Camp, a short-term correctional facility for males ages 15½ to 18. Director Segura, who heads up the facility, said that the impact on juveniles was profound. “When the youths got here they wouldn’t have many vocational skills,” she explains. “So to see them at the camp, learning things—getting exposure to skills they wouldn’t normally have exposure to—it was very exciting.”

 And the positive impacts were tangible, says Director Segura. “On day one here,” she adds, “juveniles would be learning about machinery they had never seen, let alone used. Later, on a family day at Probation Camp, we’d see these same young men showing their family members what the machines do. That kind of transformation was really amazing.” 

Declining populations of teens in Sonoma’s Juvenile Justice system have kept the Forestville Camp unoccupied, though the onsite workshop is still in use for training adult crews. And right now, those crew members might be repairing one of China Camp’s grills, and learning a marketable skill. 

 The program gets a thumbs up from Friends of China Camp Executive Director Martin Lowenstein. “The program teaches skills, and we are able to procure good quality park amenities at a reasonable cost. That means dollars from donations can go even further towards maintaining the park,” he explains. “It’s a win-win.”

—Harriot Manley/FOCC volunteer