KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
A new world of possibilities opened up for the Girl Scouts who took part in the MCC Power Up Trades Camp this week across Kansas City.
The third annual camp exposes high school-age girls to skilled trades — including construction, automotive, circuitry, welding and HVAC/sheet metal work — at MCC’s Advanced Technical Skills Institute.
“We are thrilled to partner with the experts at Metropolitan Community College for the third year to offer girls this unique opportunity,” Dr. Rochelle Parker, CEO of Girl Scouts of NE Kansas & NW Missouri, said in a release announcing the camp. “Providing girls the chance to gain experience in fields where women are historically underrepresented is essential to building the confidence and character that is core to the Girl Scout experience.”
Zion Porter, who attended the camp for the second summer, is no stranger to DIY projects around the house with her dad.
“When we were younger, he’d take me to Home Depot,” Porter said. “They have the little Saturdays where you could go in and build stuff with your parents, so I've been building stuff ever since I was little.”
Still, the MCC camp for Girl Scouts allowed her to see trade skills in a new light, including shielded metal arc welding.
“I feel like it was just the fact that I was around other females and also just like the bonding of it as well,” Porter said. “... It showed me what I can do — more with myself, what I'm capable of — and that made me really happy and proud of myself.”
Attending camp last summer inspired Porter to take a woodworking class last school year at Raytown High.
"I went into this not knowing that I was gonna like it as much as I did,” she said, “and I actually fell in love with it.”
Porter returned to camp this summer brimming with confidence.
“Oh, so much more confident,” she said.
That surging confidence was a theme among returning campers, including Cali Smalley.
She and the other campers helped build a doghouse for KC Pet Project earlier in the week, among other projects.
They learned to arc weld on Thursday, writing their name and tacking together steel pieces to make a flower.
“(Welding) the flower was pretty easy,” Smalley said. “I didn't do it last year because I was too nervous to do it to see if I would get burned or not.”
But seeing her fellow campers doing it helped her work up the nerve.
“Zion did it, so I know how it goes now, and I know that I'm not going to be afraid of something that doesn't really hurt you,” Smalley said.
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