FITCHBURG, Wis. — Thanks to a $1.5 million donation by Madison non-profit Ascendium, the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County’s McKenzie Regional Workforce Center is one step closer to becoming a reality.
“We almost had a party when we found out that they were going to support at that level,” said VP of Workforce Development at the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County Alan Branch.
The latest donation puts the fundraising total at $30.1 million, just shy of the $35 million goal.
The center will be aimed at getting young people interested in the skilled trades and giving them the foundation of knowledge to be successful in them.
“It’s a path to the skilled trades which are high paying jobs and a path toward upward social mobility,” said Ascendium spokesperson Brett Lindquist. “This is also supporting the economy by providing skilled labor to businesses that are really in need of that.”
At the McKenzie Regional Workforce Center, kids will be able to learn the basics of everything from carpentry to plumbing to welding and more.
“There are a lot of kids, like me, I was one of them, who didn’t see a four year college in their future,” said Branch. “Connecting them to playing in the sand with dirt trucks, that can actually be a career, but expose them to the pathway, some of the things that they have to be good at in order to achieve it.”
Branch says some of the hands-on learning has started even before the center is open.
“They came in while the construction was going on,” said Branch. “We had about 15 kids who worked with our carpenters and they actually built one of the walls in the Entrepreneurship Center. I’m looking forward to them coming back as students and bragging about the impact that they’ve had in the center already.”
The McKenzie Regional Workforce Center is expected to open to students in late July.
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