As West Lowndes High School eighth-grader DeMarion McCoy considers his options for a career track next school year, all he knows is he wants to be a skilled laborer.
On Wednesday, after receiving hands-on experience with a cargo loading and bulldozer simulator at the East Mississippi Community College Communiversity, he might have narrowed that down a little more.
“This was really cool,” McCoy said. “I’m getting a chance to play around with stuff and learn things I’ve never learned how to do before. It interests me because I think I want to do some of this stuff for my career.”
He was one of more than 2,800 area eighth-graders who will engage with the FORGE Foundation’s three-day interactive skilled trades expo. During the event, students interact with exhibits ranging from an excavator and bulldozer simulator, a “nail bar” where they drive nails into wood and a booth where students learn how to lay brick, among others.
Founded in 2018 as Family Organizations Recruiting Great Employees to represent its five founding members — Burns Dirt, McCrary-West Construction, Graham Roofing, APAC and West Brothers Construction — FORGE has expanded to include other area businesses such as PACCAR.
Businesses within FORGE work together on recruiting the next generation of skilled laborers.
Nic Parish, founding FORGE member and vice president of operations and contracting at Burns Dirt, said the expo provides a chance for students to consider their options moving forward by having them interact with skilled laborers and the machines and tools they use to do their jobs.
“I always go back to this idea that I think in our generation, our parents always said that you can be anything you want to be as long as it’s a doctor, lawyer or an engineer,” Parish said. “If you want to be like that, that’s great, but there’s also a lot of career paths out there that don’t have to fall down those pathways. The importance of this (event) is really to open people’s minds up to different careers out there.”
New Hope Middle School student Tyrekus Brooks said he enjoyed the McCrary-West Construction exhibit, where he used a drill to bore a hole through a concrete wall.
“It was pretty cool because I just did that for the first time,” Brooks said. “The expo really does help me choose what I can go and do next because of the options. It can help me choose what I do in the future.”
The FORGE Career Expo began Tuesday night for a regional business after hours, allowing adults to see the exhibits.
Melinda Lowe, who joined FORGE as its executive director in July, said this expo was the biggest one yet, featuring 28 schools in 11 counties, 30 career coaches, 150 volunteers and 35 vendors, including area Career Tech Education programs, businesses, universities and other organizations.
“We have found that there is a lot more interest out there,” Lowe said. “… When we’ve reached out to the schools, they’re thrilled. We even have schools who are reaching out to us saying, ‘Hey, do you have room for us?’ The reason we have them as eighth-graders is because they are preparing their high school schedule, and they’re starting to meet with their counselors to determine that. So, they may come here and find something that they really like.”
Lowe added that after the expo, she and her team plan to start collecting enrollment data from area CTE programs to gauge the interest the expo creates.
Trey Unruh, co-owner of Texas-based Unruh Concrete Pumping, whose company agreed to participate in the expo for the first time, said events like this serve as an opportunity for companies to familiarize themselves with student groups and spark interest for the next generation of workers.
“We originally came out here to pour concrete for the Aluminum Dynamics mill,” Unruh said.
“Most of these kids don’t realize that you can make good money when working in construction. They’ve probably never seen a pump truck or an excavator up close before. Now, they can see it and think about the idea that you can make just as much money doing this as working in the city or at a bank. Some guys working with us make as much as $80,000.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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