Wanganui Chamber Of Commerce Trade Workshop was held on the 9th of November.  We were lucky to have Mayor Dale Williams from Otorohanga as our guest speaker.  Mayor Dale presented their proven success story of supporting the young people in their community, resulting in zero unemployed under the age of 25.  We had 57 people from a good cross section of our community present.  We agreed on the following vision statement “Working together towards sustainable youth employment”. 

To progress the vision requires understanding a multitude of issues and taking it one step at a time. Communication, partnerships and understanding all the issues is the key to making it work. 

It is important we provide solutions for our employers, assist our training providers, careers advisors and help promote all the trades to our schools and young people.

It is vitally important we gather as much information as possible, identify the mistakes other areas have made and capitalise on their successes before stepping forward.  We want the next step to be the most appropriate for our area and have the capabilities to expand into our region as well.

Good partnerships, committed stakeholders, robust connections and a buy in commitment from all the parties will be the key to benefiting our youth, our businesses and our city.

The shortage of Trades people has been a concern for some time and can only be fixed by more apprenticeships being made available, more apprenticeship funding would make a significant difference to the shortages we are experiencing.