A huge trade show coming to NHTI on Friday, Nov. 15, to show off the range of jobs available in industries known loosely as “the trades” is targeting students, as you would expect. But it has another audience at least as important: their parents.
“By doing talks with parents, I realized this wasn’t a kid problem,” said Steve Turner, founder of the nonprofit Bring Back the Trades, which was created to show teens who could become plumbers, electricians or mechanics instead of automatically going to college after high school.
“It’s not that parents don’t want the kids to go into the trades; it’s that they’re not educated on what the trades are. They have no idea of what the jobs are,” he said.
Friday’s event will feature 81 vendors under two tents, with six food trucks, a live band, and a talk by television host Mike Rowe, best known for the show “Dirty Jobs” and an advocate for skilled hands-on professionals. He is scheduled to be interviewed by New Hampshire’s governor-elect, Kelly Ayotte.
It will also give out $110,000 in scholarships. The image of dirty and dangerous work might hold sway in popular imagination “but today you could eat off the floor of a manufacturing business,” Turner said, adding that it’s not uncommon for them to offer daycare, health care and other perks. A variety of work is available, too: “It’s not that you have to pick up a hammer or be a welder; there are other jobs within that job: Estimating, bookkeeping, truck driving.”
Turner owns Turner’s Upholstery in Rye, which makes upholstery for the automotive and marine markets, and celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.
He started Bring Back the Trades in 2017 because, in a story that will resonate with many business owners, he had trouble finding employees. “I found I couldn’t grow it because kids weren’t going into the trades.”
The organization provides education, connects businesses with students, and offers $1,500 in scholarships to anybody attending a Career and Technical Education school like Concord’s Regional Technical Center. It has expanded from talks with parents to small trade shows and now is a nationally registered nonprofit. The NHTI event is its biggest yet, Turner said.
“We’re changing the stereotype,” he said. Part of that stereotype involves gender: “We’re now followed by more females than males on our social media platforms,” while a majority of essays they receive each month from scholarship applicants come from girls, Turner said. Applicants can write an essay or submit a video.
The event is sold out but can be streamed online.
For more information, check out bringbackthetrades.org.
— DAVID BROOKS/CONCORD MONITOR
