Night one and sparks were flying! From the side grinders, that is, being used by Needwood Middle School students Jordon, an eighth grader and Bailey, a sixth grader. Both were participating in This Girl Can, an immersion program at Golden Isles College & Career Academy (GICCA) in Brunswick, Georgia, exposing girls to careers in nontraditional and male dominated fields. The program was supported by a grant from the OREMC Foundation.

With gloves on and shields down, each was working to smooth and polish a piece of metal integral to the final project of their respective learning pathways in engineering and welding. They were two of the 26 girls participating in the three-night program, choosing one of five pathways, with a female mentor standing alongside each of them.

Asked what interested her in participating in This Girl Can, Jordan replied, “It just sounded cool. This is my second time doing the program. Last year I did engineering, so this year I chose welding. It is lots of fun and I enjoy working with the tools.”

“It is a very interesting program,” Jodan’s mom Angel agreed. “Most girls don’t know about these career avenues. She learned a lot about engineering from the program last year and is excited to explore the welding pathway this year.”

Over in construction, Logan, a homeschooled student, is getting ready to use the miter saw to make the first cut on a board she measured and marked to serve as the base of a tree project she is building. The past two years she did the engineering pathway, and as her mother Jen explained, “My daughter loves this program. It is great hands-on experience, and she had so much fun the first year building a little butterfly robot. It ignited her interest in engineering. She built a  battery powered car last year that had her working with gears and making technological tweaks to ensure it ran correctly.”

Logan agrees, exclaiming, “I love this program because it gets me hands on with things I’m interested in and involves a lot of thinking.”

Giving the girls and their mentors firsthand experience is really what the program is all about according to GICCA Foundation CEO/Workforce Strategy Leader Brian Weese, MBA. He said, “We’ve done a dozen sections of This Girl Can starting with just welding and engineering, but have grown to five pathways including automotive, aviation and construction.”

Angel Jackson, the lead mentor in our welding pathway, is a former This Girl Can, participant,” Weese continues. “She came to do the automotive pathway, but we didn’t have enough girls register for that, so moved her to welding. She then enrolled in GICCA’s welding curriculum, earning several welding certificates and did Work Based Learning at R.G. Grabber Steel Fabrication right here in Brunswick. They hired her full time right out of high school.”

GICCA Principal Dr. Joseph Depenhart added that, nationwide there is an extreme shortage of workers in skilled trades which are mostly male dominated. “When you are only drawing on half the potential workforce by not recruiting women, that’s a problem. Trades can be very lucrative careers, and this program exposes girls to those opportunities that can be found right here in our community.”

As icing on the cake, Weese shared that GICCA had its first all-female welding team participate in the SkillsUSA—a workforce development organization for students— regional competition in Statesboro, Georgia, last fall.

Back in the aviation room, girls were building a model airplane to help learn the parts and pieces of an aircraft and the role they all play in the mechanics of flying.  Earlier in the evening, JetBlue Pilot Cindy Rucker, kicked off the program talking about her 22-year career in aviation and the education and flight training required to become a pilot. She said she was one of 250 female pilots employed by JetBlue.

In the automotive garage, girls and their mentors received the rundown on the importance of vehicle maintenance, safe handling of fluids and required personal protective equipment. All will be put into play at the next session when they learn how to check and change the oil in a car.

The three-night program culminates with each girl having completed a project in their chosen pathway and receiving a This Girl Can certificate during a “graduation ceremony,” sporting their This Girl Can shirts of course!

This Girl Can is part of a broader workforce development initiative in Glynn County Schools presented in partnership with the Golden Isles Development Authority, Coastal Pines Technical College, College of Coastal Georgia and the Brunswick Golden Isles Chamber of Commerce.

 The OREMC Foundation serves a community initiative supporting education, community health and economic development. Funding for the Foundation currently comes from unclaimed capital credits and other donations that may be received. Qualifying organizations in the six Georgia and two Florida counties OREMC serves are invited to submit grant applications outlining their project plans and related funding requests. A nine-member Foundation Board of Trustees—one member representing each of OREMC’s districts—will review applications and award grants on a quarterly basis. For information and application visit oremc.com/foundation.