This story starts with the desire of the Pierre/Ft. Pierre to celebrate our 75th anniversary as a club. The club developed a plan to gift our community with enhancements to the outdoors within the community. One of these gifts is to build and place a number of park benches with an attached bike rack.
The question of who would build these led to a discussion with Stanley County Schools in Ft. Pierre. They were in the process of restarting their CTE and had just hired a new instructor for their welding and machining courses.
The cooperation came together when the instructor said they could build three of these benches each year but would first need to buy the material to build a welding table. Rotary bought material and had it delivered to the school and the class constructed it.
The class started the first bench build in November with it nearly completed by the end of January. Part of the process for the class was to build jigs that can be used to build the next ones.
The success at this point in the project is the amount of community buy in for the project and the cooperation between the school and Rotary. Students, parents, teachers and administrators are all excited to see what the kids can do. Rotary members are very excited about product and the way it's being put together.
There are now 60 kids each day from middle school through high school seniors who have hands on the project. The goal now is for the classes to build 15 benches by the end of the next school year.
The cooperation came together when the instructor said they could build three of these benches each year but would first need to buy the material to build a welding table. Rotary bought material and had it delivered to the school and the class constructed it.
The class started the first bench build in November with it nearly completed by the end of January. Part of the process for the class was to build jigs that can be used to build the next ones.
The success at this point in the project is the amount of community buy in for the project and the cooperation between the school and Rotary. Students, parents, teachers and administrators are all excited to see what the kids can do. Rotary members are very excited about product and the way it's being put together.
There are now 60 kids each day from middle school through high school seniors who have hands on the project. The goal now is for the classes to build 15 benches by the end of the next school year.