For Immediate Release
The 2019 New Hampshire Construction Career Days sets new records!
For its 11th event in 10 years, New Hampshire Construction Career Days crushed an all time student attendance record with 1,553 middle and high school students attending from 58 different programs throughout the Granite State on September 26th and 27th at the Hillsborough County Youth Fairgrounds in New Boston! Since its inaugural event in 2009, NH-CCD has (collectively) put well over 10,000 students through this program!
Also setting the record in 2019 were the number of exhibitors. 101 exhibitors, including 37 pieces of live heavy equipment were available for the students to engage and raise their career awareness of the construction and transportation industries. Through hands-on engagement with heavy equipment, welding, small tools, plumbing, electrical wiring, surveying, waste water management, bridge construction, land clearing, underground utilities and public works, the students transform in real time. “If the job touches construction, it’s here for the students to experience,” says Catherine Schoenenberger, Founder and President of this non-profit. “It’s amazing to watch how the kid that gets off the bus in morning with the teenage ‘this ain’t for me attitude’ get back on the bus less than four hours later, elated and eager to learn more about what a career in construction could mean for him/her.”
Although there hasn’t been a definitive way to measure the number of students who have routed their careers to construction, the organizers are convinced that
this program has made a difference. “Our teachers and administrators clamor for student registration spaces…they love this event and consider a “must” for their students,” Schoenenberger continues. One student’s essay on his experience at 2019 also demonstrates the impact of NH-CCD. In part it reads, “This was my first time experiencing [a] construction site in person. It’s a whole lot different when you are actually standing there with a hard hat on your head and work boots on your feet…One big thing I would personally like to change about construction and the trade industry is how [the construction workers] are perceived as dumb lug heads [just] lifting heavy things up and then putting them down. [They] are very hard workers [who know their stuff]…I really do see them a whole lot differently [now].”
For more information visit www.nhccd.weebly.com or contact Catherine Schoenenberger at [email protected]