Calling All Skilled Trade Students: Apply Now For a Scholarship Toward a Rewarding Career

From PA Chamber of Business & Industry

Starting this week, individuals with a goal of pursuing a career in the skilled trades can apply online for the 2018 Work Ethic Scholarship that will help to make this goal a reality. In 2017, through donations from Pennsylvania’s business community, the PA Chamber Educational Foundation and the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, $135,000 in scholarship dollars was provided to 47 deserving students across Pennsylvania. Some of those students were highlighted in the fall 2017 edition of Catalyst, the PA Chamber’s quarterly magazine, and were also spotlighted on the PA Chamber’s new workforce-focused website.

Given the success of last year’s program and with a goal to expand the program’s reach, the PA Chamber is working to educate students, their families, educators and businesses throughout Pennsylvania about various good-paying skilled trade jobs that are waiting to be filled and the requirements necessary to enter into those occupations. We’re also telling business leaders that by contributing toward the scholarship, they aren’t just helping advance the lives of people in their communities – they’re helping to build tomorrow’s skilled workforce, which will better position Pennsylvania for a vibrant economic future.

Students with an interest in learning more about the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, applying for the scholarship and signing Mike Rowe’s famed S.W.E.A.T. Pledge (essentially, a promise that they will exhibit a hard work ethic if chosen for a scholarship) can visit the website, profoundlydisconnected.com. 

This scholarship program, the mikeroweWORKS Foundation and the PA Chamber’s workforce-focused website all have the same goals as the Columbia Montour Chamber with regards to workforce development, which is educating young people about the various types of good-paying jobs available in our area in skilled trades, in which there is a shortage of qualified people, not just in our area but statewide and nationally. Later this year, the Chamber, in conjunction with several other partner organizations, will be launching a similar website as the PA Chamber’s workforce development website, but with a more local focus.