Officials Praise Women’s Job Training Program

Entering its halfway point, an eight-week pilot program to teach young women nontraditional job skills such as carpentry is being hailed as a success by city officials.

“It’s going great. The women are very enthusiastic,” said Lynn Shaw, the city’s liaison with trade unions who also is an electrician.

The Job Training Act Partnership Program is open to women 14 to 21, but nearly all are teenagers, many still in high school. About half are mothers, Shaw said.

Under the program, the young women receive exposure to locksmithing, plumbing, wall papering, tile setting and electrical work. They also learned carpentry from five women from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.

“In the past you’d get a kid and put them in an office and they’d run a copying machine all summer,” Shaw said. “The problem was they weren’t being trained for jobs that provide economic self-sufficiency. The idea here is to expose them to high-paying jobs that will make them self sufficient.” The women earn $5.15 an hour working a 25-hour week.