County girls learn trades, technology at TNT event

PRESQUE ISLE – With an orange traffic sign outside that read “Women Working,” about 110 girls from St. Agatha to Danforth were busy Wednesday cutting pipes, building rockets and bridges and running diagnostics on heavy machinery as part of the third annual Tools ‘n Trades conference at Northern Maine Community College.

The event, hosted by the Aroostook Coalition for Women and Girls in Trades and Technology, exposes girls to nontraditional careers through hands-on workshops and opportunities to meet women employed in those fields.

“What we want to do is expose them to jobs with a higher wage and more opportunities, fields that are typically male-dominated,” Suzanne Senechal-Jandreau, spokeswoman for the coalition, said Wednesday. “We want to let them sample the trades.”

And that’s precisely what the girls were doing. Some of the red hard-hat wearing participants, such as Fort Fairfield juniors Patricia Sullivan and Caitlin Beaulieu, attended the event last year. Back then, the two took part in an automotive workshop – Sullivan is taking an automotive class in Presque Isle this year because of it – and this year they picked carpentry and “Bubbleology,” or principles of scientific theory, data analysis and the elasticity of bonds.

The girls said they wanted to come back to learn about more careers.

“These trades pay more, so it’s good to learn about them,” Sullivan said Wednesday. “Normally people wouldn’t think girls would do this kind of stuff.”

“It shows that you don’t have to be a boy to do this and it makes you more open to job positions and opportunities,” Beaulieu agreed.

Crowds of girls spent the morning learning about plumbing and heating, firefighting, computer aided drafting, metal fabrication, carpentry, and trauma surgery, among other workshops. Later in the day, they sat in on a panel discussion that featured women working in nontraditional careers.

Peaches Bass, a program specialist with the state Department of Labor, made the trip from Augusta to take part in the event. She explained that the Aroostook Coalition is one of five in the state. There are coalitions in central Maine, southern Maine, Bangor and Washington County.

Organizations involved in the Aroostook Coalition include Women, Work and Community; Women Unlimited; the state Departments of Education and Transportation; the Presque Isle Career Center; Northern Maine Community College; Maine Vocational Regions I and II; regional technology centers and high schools as well as area businesses and tradeswomen.

“At the earliest age possible, we want to see girls explore jobs that provide them with economic security and personal satisfaction,” Bass said.

The most important thing, she said, is to ensure that women in the state know about the job opportunities out there.

“It’s important that they know they have more choices,” Bass said. “They don’t usually see girls driving a truck, putting on fire gear … You should know the world is bigger and has more to offer than what you may have been told.”