{"id":449305,"date":"2026-09-27T13:08:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T13:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/449305\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T13:08:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T13:08:57","slug":"building-the-future-home-depot-program-introduces-kids-to-skilled-trade-careers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/449305\/","title":{"rendered":"Building the future! Home Depot program introduces kids to skilled trade careers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>College isn&#8217;t the only path to a successful career. With hundreds of thousands of skilled trade jobs currently unfilled,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pathtopro.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> a new free program from The Home Depot<\/a> is helping middle and high school students discover careers in plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, and more.<\/p>\n<p>We Are Austin welcomed Chris Waits and Erin Eisen to introduce<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pathtopro.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> Skills Explorers<\/a>, a hands-on program designed to give young people an early look at career opportunities they may not have considered.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the full video above to learn how Skills Explorers works and how families, educators and youth organizations can participate for free.Introducing students to another career path<\/p>\n<p>Waits says the skilled trades gap has developed over decades as college became the primary path many students were encouraged to pursue and hands-on learning opportunities became less common in schools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile that is a great path, it is not the only way to be successful,\u201d Waits said.<\/p>\n<p>According to Waits, there are currently about 300,000 open skilled trade jobs, and the gap could grow significantly as experienced plumbers, electricians, and other professionals retire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor every five of them that retire, there&#8217;s only two young people coming in behind them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>What is Skills Explorers?<\/p>\n<p>The Home Depot and The Home Depot Foundation created<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pathtopro.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> Skills Explorers <\/a>to introduce younger students to the trades before they&#8217;re making major decisions about life after high school.<\/p>\n<p>The free online curriculum includes facilitator guides, videos, and hands-on activities exploring areas including painting, carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can create as many training programs as we want, but if youth aren&#8217;t interested in those careers, we&#8217;re never really going to solve the problem,\u201d Eisen said.<\/p>\n<p>The program was developed with Scouting America, drawing inspiration from its merit badge model, and piloted with Boys &amp; Girls Clubs of America.<\/p>\n<p>Building confidence through hands-on learning<\/p>\n<p>Waits, an Eagle Scout himself, says hands-on experiences can expose young people to interests they may never have connected with a future career.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey start developing some confidence, and they also develop a lot of curiosity and learn things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Skills Explorers is available to educators, parents, homeschool families, after-school programs, mentors, and other organizations working with young people.<\/p>\n<p>The broader goal is ambitious: 15 million introductions to skilled trades by 2032.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pathtopro.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Visit PathToPro.com<\/a> to access the free program and learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College isn&#8217;t the only path to a successful career. With hundreds of thousands of skilled trade jobs currently&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-449305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}