More than 150 boy scouts to attend welding event Saturday
SIKESTON, Mo. (KFVS) - A Boy Scout Merit Badge Camp at Sikeston Career and Technology Center is hosting a welding event for scouts to gain hands-on learning experience with welding.
The event offers career exploration for the scouts.
”Right now, we have around 130 to 150 participants,” said Welding Instructor Brent Trankler.
The main scouting event will take place on Saturday, June 4 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. A career expo will be held from 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Brent Trankler, welding instructor says the Boy Scout Merit Badge Camp is an opportunity for scouts to explore a career in welding.
“It’s an exposure to a skill in trade that they might not get to see. We’ve used it as a recruitment tool for my class here and we get a lot of kids interested in it at youth,” Trankler said.
Trankler says they will have five stations for scouts to participate in hands on activities.
“These activities include wire welding, stick welding, oxy fuel cutting, some virtual welding machines that were donated by Lincoln Electric and we also have a black smithing event,” said Trankler.
Scott Crumpecker, with Boy Scouts of America, says this is a unique experience.
“With welding and metal work these are trade skills that most kids are not going to learn if they’re college bound kids,” said District Commissioner with Boy Scouts of America Scott Crumpecker said.
Both Trankler and Crumpecker say this event occurs every two years so they are hopeful for a great turnout.
“We want them to have fun first and foremost, be safe, exposure to it, get to know some of the activities and that way going into it later on they might say hey we did enjoy this particular area of it and maybe get to come back to it maybe take the class full time,” Trankler said.
“It’s gonna be a beautiful day out tomorrow, so we want to enjoy the outdoors, but we want to take a nontraditional type of skill and place that in the heart and the mind of the youth,” Crumpecker said.
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