VIEWPOINTS INDUSTRY LEADER OPINION & ANALYSIS Let’s Celebrate the Olympians of the Trades! v T
he WorldSkills Competition was established in 1950. It’s the world’s largest professional education event. Competitors from more than 72 countries and regions in the Americas, Europe, Asia, South Pacifi c, India, the Middle East and Africa simulate real work challenges that must be completed to international standards of quality. Nearly 1000 adolescents under the age of 24 compete. The event, held every two years, is happening next month in São Paulo, Brazil. This is the fi rst time it will be held in South America, just as the athletic Olympics will be in 2016. In fact, the WorldSkills International organization is patterned after the International Olympic Committee in many ways. It’s the “Olympics of the Trades.”
Low participation numbers by Americans refl ect the lack of knowledge and support for WorldSkills in the United States. Of the four machining competitions that our company is sponsoring with Mastercam software—CNC Milling, CNC Turning, Plastic Die Engineering, and Manufacturing Team Challenge—there are three students from the Tennessee College of Applied Technology in Knoxville who will compete in the Manufacturing Team Challenge. This is the fi rst time we will have contestants from the United States in that particular event. We are very proud of them and thank all the volun- teers and backers who made this happen. Sadly, though, we had qualifi ed competitors for CNC Milling and CNC Turning, but they didn’t have the money to fund their additional training requirements and travel expenses. It is costly to send a competitor, and usually each participant needs to travel with at least two others—a mentor to help with the technical aspects of the tasks be- fore and during the competition and a chaperone. It can be upwards of $30,000 to cover expenses for each individual person to attend. Happily, we do have 16 competitors in other sections, such as plumbing and heating, restaurant service, mechatronics, hairdressing, automobile service technology, and others. As manufacturing is vitally impor- tant in the US, we need more dollars from the metalworking industry to ramp up our participation in all of the machining contests at WorldSkills.
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With all the talk of concern about our skills gap over the last several years, I hardly think we in manufacturing are apathetic about the event; it must be simply a lack of awareness. We have many trade contests at the state level, which culminate in SkillsUSA, our national competition, which is gaining in aware- ness and support each year. SkillsUSA is the offi cial channel to accept fi nancial support and in-kind donations for the national champions to elevate to the WorldSkills. It’s disheartening that the competitors who have worked so hard to win at the state and national events cannot take their skills to the global stage. Please, let’s make sure there’s funding available for future WorldSkills competitors. You can donate easily at http://skill-
susa.org/competitions/worldskills/donate-to-worldteam/.
Low participation numbers by Americans refl ect the lack of knowledge and support for WorldSkills in the United States. In addition to helping to sponsor competitors, let’s get the
WorldSkills Competition held here in the United States. That may help to increase awareness going forward and, perhaps more importantly, most host countries bus in elementary, middle, and high school students to observe, inquire, and engage with the competitors, which often positively affects their own future career choices. It was held in the US only one time: 1981 in Atlanta, 34 years ago. It’s generally a 10- year undertaking to become the host city. David J. Worden, program director of the SkillsUSA Championships and the assistant technical delegate for WorldSkills, welcomes any- one interested in working toward this effort to contact him. Please write to
dworden@skillsusa.org to relay your thoughts. In the meantime, thank you for your good wishes for our US Manufacturing Challenge team. You might even consider attending WorldSkills in São Paulo August 11–16 and root them on yourself. Witness fi rst-hand what all the excitement is about surrounding this worthy movement! Learn more about WorldSkills at http://www.worldskills
saopaulo2015.com/en/.
Dan Newby
Educational Programs Manager CNC Software Inc.
www.mastercam.com
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