The Boys & Girls Club Technical Training Center teaches students about life and logistics
Darren Shervington sits quietly at a small table inside of a receiving facility at the
Boys & Girls Club Technical Training Center, waiting for his class to start. The soon-to-be East High School graduate is beaming, and it’s not because he’s almost done with school. “I got that job,” he says, speaking of the new FedEx job he is scheduled to start in a few days. “And, yeah, it feels pretty good.”
Shervington is one of 88 kids to participate in the
Boys & Girls Club of Memphis’ logistic program aimed at preparing youth for entry level logistic jobs. Each student spends up to an hour in class learning the basics of supply chain management, safety practices and the proper use of equipment. Barcodes line the walls and allow students to enact scanning in freight and bowls of beads that represent products which are used to simulate how a warehouse professional fulfills a detailed order list.
“They get to go through all the basic skills,” says Richard Goughnour, instructor of the logistics program. “What this does is provides the kids an opportunity to have a real head up (on the logistics field.)”
But by far the most interesting part of the program, or at least according to Shervington, is the forklift and power jack certification training. With the oversight of Goughnour, students get to navigate a course of orange cones and move pallets of freight to its proper destination. The instruction doesn’t stop with just the hands-on training; students must pass written exams on safety procedures as well. “What I try to do is to steer them into an entry level position that they can be successful in,” Goughnour says. “We want to build life skills that apply not only to logistics, but also to what it’s like in the real world.”
Joe Sing, the director of the Boys & Girls Club Technical Training Center, says they want to teach kids not just the hands-on skills but how to be a good employee, to use teamwork and good communication skills. Once complete, students of the program receive Occupational, Safety and Health Administration certifications that can be carried into any job.
“[The program] really helped me a lot with all of the safety [rules],” Shervington says. “I already knew everything when I went into my job interview, so I got to go in already with a lot of knowledge.” The fact that Shervington already has the skills logistic employers need is completely by design, thanks in part to the experience of his teacher. Goughnour spent his days prior to the Boys & Girls Club as safety director at the Cummins Inc., warehouse, overseeing safety and training of up to 700 employees and hundreds of thousands of square feet. In 2009, Goughnour retired, before taking over the logistics program to oversee just a few dozen students and a 30-square-foot “warehouse” used for the course. “Sometimes, I think I get more out of it than the kids do,” he says. “It’s been very different as it’s the first time I’ve done a lot of work with kids.”
Thanks to Goughnour’s instruction, Shervington was first able to land a part-time job at the Williams-Sonoma distribution facility last year helping pave the way for his current job at FedEx. Along with Shervington, Goughnour says at least five of his students in the last two years have used the logistics program as a springboard to college. And if those students decide to dedicate their long-term careers to the logistics industry, statistics say they’ll be able to find a job at least in Memphis.
According to a 2006 study by
The Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy of The Brookings Institution, Memphis has the highest share of warehouse and transportation workforce among the top 100 U.S. cities. Nearly 12 percent of the Bluff City workforce is employed by the transportation and warehouse industry, according to the study. And where there’s a significant workforce, there’s likely also a significant demand, something Memphis youth may never consider.
According to Ernie Nichols, director of the
FedEx Center for Supply Chain Management at the University of Memphis, the logistics industry never crosses the mind of many students despite its massive local footprint. “That's one of the challenges we face,” he says. “Kids coming into college, they may know about accounting, MIS and marketing, but they’re probably not many kids in high school thinking about supply chain management.”
Despite this challenge, Nichols said his program is growing as more college students look for broader fields that have a higher demand for jobs in the current economy. In the last two years, the supply chain management program has doubled its enrollment to around 85 students. “We have to continue to educate the students on what the program is about and what careers opportunities there are,” Nichols says. “We have to get rid of the idea of, ‘why do I want a degree to go work in a warehouse?’” Getting rid of that perception will likely need to come before kids enter college, with programs like the Boys & Girls Club’s logistics course. “Supply chain management is not something that is even on your average high school kid's radar,” Nichols says. “There aren’t many thinking about being a VP of distribution for someone, but part of it is just making them aware of what career opportunities there are out there.”
Boys & Girls Club Statistics:
- Serves more than 7,300 kids in the greater Memphis area
- Annual budget: $3.7 million
- Has six clubs, one resident camp, and Technical Training Center
- Technical Training Center began holding classes in 2006
- The 21,000 square foot facility includes logistics, culinary and automotive classes among others
- In 2010, 230 trainees took classes at the Technical Training Center
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