Arlington Diocesan WorkCamp is an international Christian Community, which provides approximately 800 youths the experience of direct service for the needy within the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. Each summer, local high school students come together for an intensive learning and faith building opportunity, in which they get to build wheel chair ramps, fix roofs, install new windows, replace floors and do a variety of other services for those who are less fortunate, during the last week of June.
Such and endeavor requires a great deal of preparation from everyone involved. One important area of preparation is tool training. Many of the teenagers that assist with WorkCamp have little to no experience with hand or power tools. The work camp volunteers are required to attend a training session for hands on use of power tools, tools that more than likely the will be required to use on their projects.
JL Tippett Company employees, Joe Tippett and Steve Tippett, volunteered to provide hands on guidance for the safe use of power tools during two Saturday training sessions in May.
As a part of the training session, Joe and Steve shared their tool expertise helping the youths to become familiar with the use of tape measures, squares, levels, ladders, hand saws and circular saws. Each work camp volunteer was required to demonstrate how to safely use each tool. We are pleased to say the training sessions went very well and there was no need to open a first aid kit.
In addition to the tool training, one of JL Tippett Company’s employees will be spending a week on one of the Work Camp projects as a volunteer contractor. We will check back in the next newsletter to let you know how it all went, but hopefully the weather will cooperate, and everyone is safe.