About the Project

The American Welding Society estimates a 400,000 person labor shortage by 2030. Our program is an attempt to remedy that and create better lives for our students at the same time, but we need help raising our numbers. Right now the Kennedy Welding Pathway only serves the students of Kennedy High, which has a student body of around 900 students. Only about 120 of which actually take welding classes in any given year. We seek to improve this with an after school project open to students from any high school in the district. This has the potential to increase the output of graduates from our program into local industry by a factor of five. The IFT grant will fund the construction of a mobile welding lab that can be taken to the other schools (and beyond) to highlight what is taught in our program. A mobile welding lab will give us legs so that we can move around, be visible, and interact with the public in ways not possible without one. The potential for growth is tremendous, and growth is what we need to meet the needs of our students, community and industry.