Sep 19

Sep 19 Column: Giving Work a Chance Down Under

Joel Leonard and the Thorminator arriving in New Zealand. All Photos by Joel Leonard/Davidson Local.

Job Coach Joel Leonard is off to New Zealand to get more ideas for Davidson locals

New Zealand reminds me of Colorado on an island with the numerous white-capped mountains and beautiful landscapes. Although very beautiful, New Zealand also needs to have solid manufacturing support in order to sustain its populations to meet health, safety and nourishment requirements. That is why it is striving to grow its manufacturing capacity levels and commercialize more of its inventions.

New Zealand is a small country comprising the North and South Island; it is thirteen hundred miles from Australia. As a result, New Zealanders have become independent, self-reliant resourceful workers who often engineer their own solutions to problems.

Because of the many braided creeks that are too shallow for normal propeller run boats, a New Zealand inventor built the first ever jet boat that propels water from the front to the back of the boat and skips on the surface level of the waterways. At this time, jet boats are used in a variety of applications like rescue missions all over the world. Additionally, they discovered that local possum hair mixed into Merino wool makes sweaters, toboggans and gloves stronger, more water resistant and warmer.

For the next few weeks, I will be touring New Zealand high schools and will be providing 15 sessions to New Zealand high schools in Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua and Tauranga.

And yes, I will be taking the 50-pound hammer, Thorminator, to challenge students to build structures to protect eggs and allow the smallest students to lift the Thorminator to smash the eggs. This fun exercise is the same program I delivered in all of the Davidson County middle schools last year to inspire more to take on engineering and support manufacturing career pathways.

In New Zealand, this will be the last week of class before students leave for their pre-summer break. We hope this crazy experience will plant seeds for them to consider manufacturing pathways to backfill their country’s skilled needs. Even New Zealand is facing a skills recession even though business is growing as it is in the Davidson County area of North Carolina.

I will be meeting with the next New Zealand Minister of Manufacturing and will learn more about future projects to lift the skill levels to meet the needs of industry - and hopefully I can implement some of these ideas in the Davidson County area to give more local workers a chance!

Then, from October 3 to 5, I will be keynoting several sessions during the Maintenance Engineering Society of New Zealand annual conference and recognizing top apprentices with national industry awards of merit for their achievements.

Stay tuned as I will be sharing some of my New Zealand experiences and hope to learn more of their best practices that can be implemented in North Carolina to lift more out of poverty and sustain its manufacturing renaissance underway.