GROWING LOCAL WORKFORCE: Programs in Pitt County offer in-person job shadowing and training.

• Author: Blake, Kathy

Last March, 2,700 middle and high school students from 17 Pitt County schools left their classrooms behind to visit area businesses, where they could see, hear and touch what actually happens in a workplace for one week.

Grow Local, a Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce initiative sponsored by the Pitt County Economic Development Commission, allows teenagers to interact with career opportunities in their own neighborhoods in hopes that venturing beyond textbooks will keep them in the local workforce after graduation.

"It is not a field trip," says Greenville-Pitt County Chamber President and CEO Kate Teel. "You can walk through and see a pharmaceutical company, or you can put your hands on a forklift, and you can ask, 'What kind of education [do] you need to have that job?'"

Companies throughout the state are competing with each other for a workforce during a low unemployment period. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the state's unemployment rate was 4.2% in July. This low rate has workforce-development experts looking in their own backyard to encourage students to engage with local industries.

"A lot of our larger employers have a workforce that is aging out or have service-type jobs in which they have a difficult time filling the roles," Teel says. "You hear it on the national level, but when [we] hear it on a local level day after day, we know we have to do something about it, or it will have an impact on our local economy. "

Grow Local launched with a pilot program in July 2018 when five businesses hosted 100 students. In March, a range of businesses opened their doors to explain their daily operations and answer questions for a much larger group.

J. Morgan Design Associates Inc., a Greenville company that creates custom interiors, hosted about 10 students. "We told them an interior design degree would be ideal for this career," says Katherine Brantley, design assistant and showroom man ager. She says such programs make a true difference in showing young students what life is actually like in an industry post-graduation.

"In college, you get all the basics, but it's not until you're actually there that you put it to use and gain experience," she says. "You never know what kind of client will walk through that door. You're taught your skills [and] your standards, but you're not taught about what's going to come in."

Grow Local isn't the only program dedicated to getting students in touch with Pitt County...