COLUMBUS, MS – Courtesy of The Dispatch

This coming Wednesday, more than 1,000 area eighth-graders will participate in the FORGE Foundation’s “FORGE Your Path Career Expo” (Family Organizations Recruiting Great Employees) at EMCC’s Communiversity. At this returning event, nearly two dozen local companies that all offer construction-related services will introduce children to the kinds of work they do.

FORGE first appeared in 2018, and was the result of a number of local companies coming together in order to help to “…expose young people to opportunities and jobs in the construction industry,” said FORGE President Christee Holbrook, who also leads Graham Roofing in West Point. “No one else was doing it.” They implemented programs where they would offer vocational tech classes at area schools and a summer camp (Camp Amp) which offers children hands-on experience with a variety of professions within construction fields.

“We got a lot of great feedback from the schools and the kids,” Holbrook said. “We had to cancel the expo last year because of COVID, but the best feedback we received came this year when we announced we were going to have the career expo. Within 45 minutes of sending out the email announcing the expo, 95 percent of the spots were taken…“What we are trying to do in bringing these younger students to the career expo is to introduce them to construction jobs before they reach high school,” she went on to say. “When kids get to high school, it’s the time they begin to focus on a career path, either college or the trades.”

Please click here for the original article: https://cdispatch.com/news/2021-10-22/forge-career-expo-returns-wednesday/