CAGC Partners with Lowe’s Home Improvement

On Friday, October 19, 2018, CAGC Foundation’s Build Your Career Workforce Development Initiative Director, Tammy Ford, participated in a joint venture with Lowe’s Home Improvement to launch a new pilot program with Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Systems to provide high school students with information on the skilled trades. The event was a collaborative effort to promote Lowe’s “We Are Generation T” (WAGT) and is intended to bring awareness about the construction trades to middle and high school students. The program will be expanded throughout the Carolinas and across the nation. This was such a high-profile event that Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, representatives from Duke Energy, various CMS educators and Peyton Holland, Executive Director of the SkillsUSA North Carolina Chapter attended.

Over 65 local CMS students were in attendance and each had the opportunity to participate in five different hands-on demonstration stations where they were educated by local skilled trade and craft professionals on the benefits of pursuing a career in the trades, proper equipment handling, safety techniques and more. The students were then allowed to try their hand at various activities such as framing, tiling, appliance repair and flooring installation.

WAGT will function as a communication conduit between students, parents, educators and industry employers. The CAGC Build Your Career Initiative will partner with Lowe’s on several projects throughout the Carolinas — all developed to narrow the skills gap in the industry, elevate the industry image and facilitate the advancement of America’s youth by promoting lifelong careers in construction and craft trades via clearly defined career pathways. We Are Generation T is under the direction of Mike Mitchell, Director of Trade Skills at Lowe’s. Mitchell stated, CAGC is “a terrific organization and their leadership will play such a vital role with local schools.”

CAGC’s Build Your Career Initiative will continue to collaborate and partner with the Lowe’s WAGT program to ramp up educational and training resources available to future generations of workers interested in pursuing a career in construction and the skilled trades.