Some students at Leo Hayes High School are sparking their futures as part of March Break welding camp called Mind Over Metal.
They were able to explore welding as a career by using welding equipment. It’s part of a collaboration between the CWB Welding Foundation and the Joint Economic Development Initiative.
“These camps are designed to provide youth with a hands-on introduction to welding and inspire them to pursue a career in welding,” said Susan Crowley, executive director of the CWB Welding Foundation.
“Students build confidence and have fun while being supervised by professionals in a safe environment.”
Ayva Siokola was one of those students. She’s in Grade 11 and is looking for what might be the path for her future.
“I figured I might as well try everything I can to try and get a feel for what I want to do and I know the trades are a good option to go through, but I didn’t want to jump into the trades without having any experience … so I thought this was a good idea,” she said.
She built a metal log during her five days at the camp and felt she came away with a lot of new skills.
“For the bark, we just shut off the gas when we were using it so it created the bubble effect. You don’t actually want that when you’re welding — you want it to be smooth when actually welding.”
The camp was free to all who participated in order to remove some of the barriers for the students and the schools wanting to host them.
Teacher Joell Gallant said it was really rewarding to be part of the camp.
“I would say every time that we kind of poked our head into a booth and see someone putting into practice what we had just suggested they do and then you can see the penny drop for them, those kinds of moments are neat to have,” he said.
He said this camp will go a long way to helping students see the trades as a viable career, which is what the CWB Welding Foundation is hoping will happen.
As of 2019, there was an estimated 7,400 skilled trades workers expected to retire and there aren’t enough people choosing the trades to replace that set of the workforce.
Trish Trenter said the camps are designed to do exactly that, to show young students that trades – welding, carpentry, and automotive – are all viable paths.
“Welding is the gateway to all trades, whether you’re in automotive, whether you’re in carpentry — you do welding so the opportunity to have these youth come out participate just opens their world, opens their eyes to it,” she said.
Some of the kids won prizes for their competition on the best mig-welding technique. The CWB Welding Foundation has hosted 170 camps since 2014, 41 of which were done last year.