WESTBROOK – More than 50 girls from the area converged at Westbrook Regional Vocational Center last week to prove technical trades are not just a man’s world.

The event, Totally Trades, was held through a joint partnership of the Maine Department of Transportation, Maine Department of Education and New Ventures Maine, and exposed seventh, eighth and ninth-grade students to the trades of emergency medical services, firefighting, bicycle repair, heavy machinery operation, engineering, woodworking, forestry and automotive repair.

“The whole idea is to expose girls to different trades and let them know these are careers they can pursue,” said Lisa Sweet, New Ventures Maine workforce development specialist.

Sweet said with the population of workers in the trades aging out of the industry, it is important to expose new students to the trades early on.

“If we wait until junior or senior year, that limits their ability to attend WRVC. It’s a point in their lives where they might be thinking about (their career) and it gives them an opportunity to enroll here,” Sweet said.

Westbrook Regional Vocational Center Director Todd Fields said the center has hosted the Totally Trades event for the last five years and as a result female participation in the center’s offerings has increased. Currently, close to 40 percent of the center’s 369 students are female.

“We do have many females here who have gone through Totally Trades,” Fields said. “We have more female students in automotive, building trades and heavy machinery operation and that’s the result of being exposed to these sort of options at a younger age.”

After taking part in the trade workshops on woodworking, engineering and automotive, Westbrook High School freshman Sydney Fickett will be changing her schedule next year to take classes at Westbrook Regional Vocation Center.

“We already signed up for classes for next year, but did not include vocation classes, but I am going to change that after today,” Fickett said.

Fickett said she has always had an interest in vocational trades, stemming from her dad’s hobby of working on cars and her grandfather’s interest in woodworking projects.

Fellow freshman Jasmine James opted to go to Totally Trades to get more insight into her family’s tradition: firefighting and emergency response, something her grandfather, uncle and great-grandfather have taken to.

“After this, I am really interested in doing more classes that involved vocational trades,” she said while building a toolbox in the woodworking workshop.

Fields said the Totally Trades event is an important one for the Westbrook school system as it introduces students to Westbrook Regional Vocational Center and fields that are typically thought to be dominated by males. He noted that at the Totally Trades event, females in the field show the students that isn’t the case.

“It shows them whether they want to be a heavy machine operator, a carpenter, a firefighter or an emergency medical technician, there are females in those trades who are successful and can share their experiences with them,” Fields said.

Westbrook Middle School eighth-grader Isabella Welsch said she was interested in the event to get a feel for what sort of careers might be possible after high school.

“I wanted to see what sort of opportunity there is when I grow up and what different things I can do,” said Welsch, who took part in workshop sessions on heavy machinery operation, engineering and forestry.

Welsch, one of the 17 Westbrook Middle School students to take part in the event, said she may be interested in a career in planning or construction.

The event at Westbrook Regional Vocational Center was one of five Totally Trade conferences New Ventures Maine is putting on this year. Others are scheduled this spring in Bangor (April 6), Presque Isle (April 25) and Auburn (May 25). New Ventures Maine began as Displaced Homemakers in the 1978 to give women the skills they needed to join the workforce. Overtime, it was re-branded as Women, Work and Community and finally in 2015, as New Ventures Maine.

“We wanted to make sure folks knew we serve men and women, not just women anymore,” Sweet said of the latest name change.

Aside from Totally Trades, the organization, which operates out of nine regional centers across Maine, offers free classes in entrepreneurship, financial literacy and workforce development. The offerings are funded through the University of Maine system, federal and state funding, grants and other donations.

Sweet said the Totally Trades conference would not have been possible without the support of the staff of the Westbrook Regional Vocational Center and the volunteer instructors, who included Shannon Belt, an educator with the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, Hardy Pond Construction founder and New Ventures Maine advisory council member Deirdre Wadsworth, Maine district forester for Franklin, Oxford and Somerset counties Patty Cormier, local EMT and firefighters, Rhonda Forrester, an engineer with Sevee & Maher Engineers, Inc. and representatives of the Maine Department of Transportation.

“It was a truly collaborative effort,” she said.

Michael Kelley can be reached at 781-3661 x 125 or [email protected]

Hardy Pond Construction founder Deirdre Wadsworth helps Westbrook High School freshmen Sydney Fickett and Jasmine James construct wooden toolboxes Thursday, March 22 as part of Totally Trades, an event to introduce vocational trades to young women. (Staff photo by Michael Kelley)

More that 55 girls attended the Totally Trades event last week at Westbrook Regional Vocational Center. The annual event aims to expose the students to careers in heavy machine operation, firefighting, emergency medical services, automotive and bicycle repair, engineering, forestry and woodworking. (Staff photo by Michael Kelley)

Shannon Belt, education and outreach coordinator for The Bicycle Coalition of Maine, shows students the ins and outs of bicycle repair during one of the Totally Trades workshops March 22 at Westbrook Regional Vocational Center. (Staff photo by Michael Kelley)