For the past 24-30 months, the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber has been developing a grassroots workforce program called Chamber Works 2030. The name signifies the decade-long commitment the chamber is making to create programming and solutions to workforce issues in collaboration with local schools, businesses and municipalities. It’s a huge undertaking as rather than simply discussing issues, we’re creating tangible solutions to specific workforce needs.

A key partnership in this work has been the relationship between the chambers, business associations and the schools. In March 2021, our chamber announced the first three programs that would be created, and two of those programs relied on direct connections between students and businesses. The next nine months were mainly about recruiting regional partners and giving those partners the insight of what we hoped Chamber Works 2030 would become.

The work with the schools began in earnest in January 2022. Biweekly, our chamber met with the Extended Learning Opportunities coordinators at Morse, Mt. Ararat and Brunswick High Schools. (Early on, Morse was still hiring an ELO coordinator, so the superintendent’s office stepped in to participate.)

The efforts ramped up that spring as a potential grant for an internship-style “paid work experience” became available through the State of Maine via dedicated funds from the American Rescue Plan. The four of us worked collaboratively on each school’s application, with an addendum on each stating the regional partnership efforts that were happening through the chamber. You see, the grant awarded additional points for regional collaboration and summer work, and the partnership with the Chamber helped us get those additional points. Towards the end of summer, we found out that all three schools had been awarded grants.

Once the grant awards were announced, we entered a new phase of the collaboration as now we had to take all of the plans we laid out in the grants and make them come to life. Our collaborative grew as the Retail Association of Maine, Maine Tourism Association and Midcoast Youth Center also received funding and were invited in. Jobs for Maine Graduates does a lot of work with ELO coordinators and has experience in building business-to-school systems, so they joined us as well. Now at nearly a dozen strong, we had new work to tackle.

The ELO coordinators knew how to on-board students who wanted internships, just as the chamber and the trade associations knew how to approach businesses to recruit them to be host sites. But how does that work in the framework of this grant? Were there restrictions on what students could do? What if they’re under 18? Would this grant be for just internships and job-study programs, or would we include business tours, job shadowing and other experiences?

This grant was for “paid meaningful work,” meaning the intent is that students would get paid. How would that work? What were the benchmarks for payment? Does the school want to pay their students directly or is a third-party vendor needed? Is it one lump sum payment at the end internship or would some students need smaller payments over the course of the internship?

Beyond those questions, we got into the nitty gritty of questions like: How does this payment affect students whose families receive SNAP benefits — is this considered household income? Are New Mainer students eligible or would this violate any income-based restrictions their status has? Where does the liability insurance lie: with the student’s school, with the business or with the third-party vendor who is paying the students? If there is a third-party vendor, are the students considered employees?

To be fair, the Department of Economic and Community Development, which was administering the grant, was a willing partner in the process and helped us find those answers. One by one, we resolved each issue, which led us to the second semester of this school year. This spring, all of the hours of planning came to fruition as we piloted students through job-study experiences (which we’re labeling as “internships” moving forward as that term holds a general understanding to businesses of what the experience is) and through career exploration bus tours.

In March, students from each school began group trips to different businesses, led by different partners in the collaborative. The high schools themselves set up tours of the BIW Training Academy on Brunswick Landing, including its ship simulations and virtual reality center where students could try their hand (with the help of VR goggles) at driving a forklift, spray painting, welding and working on a high-rise building.

In April, the Maine Tourism Association led a tour of the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport where students got to see the inner workings of the hospitality industry. The tour covered culinary, customer service and even laundry, which included a very popular folding-a-fitted-sheet demonstration. Also in April, the Retail Association of Maine led a massive L.L. Bean tour, from production through retail and into the administrative offices. All the time, students were learning what it takes to hold many of the positions in these companies.

Finally, two Fridays ago, our chamber hosted a three-site tour on Brunswick Landing as students got to experience Avita, Harvest Maine, the Southern Midcoast CareerCenter and the BBRC, followed by a pizza lunch and speakers at Flight Deck Brewing afterwards. The students traveled in groups of 20 for 45-minute tours at each stop.

With a few pilot runs of the programs under our belt, we look to expand the opportunities to even more businesses this fall, which I’ll go in to in a few weeks when we open the enrollment period. But for now, thank you to all of the partners for helping us build a grassroots workforce program in our region — it has been a pleasure to work with all of you, and I can’t wait for the region to see what we do next.

If you’d like more information on our workforce efforts, please reach out to me at the BBRC office at (207) 649-5282 or cory@midcoastmaine.com.

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.