Last fall, Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC launched a light manufacturing technical course for at-risk youth in Ciudad Acuña, home city of the company’s Mexican manufacturing campus. Nearly 200 students and 12 months later, the company says it prepares to commemorate the program’s first year while planning its continuation.
Created as a pilot, Bendix says the educational initiative provides a dozen courses on light manufacturing techniques to men and women ages 18-25 who are not employed or enrolled in school. The unique 180-hour technical course, in which 12 groups of up to 20 students are studying in monthlong sessions, takes place at the Bendix Acuña campus.
Students engage in classroom training four days per week and receive practical hands-on experience one day each week, preparing them for a job in industrial manufacturing.
Bendix partnered with the Instituto de Capacitación para el Trabajo del Estado de Coahuila (ICATEC), a local training institute with deep community connections that helped to plan the course and recruit students.
“With ICATEC, we designed the program to help the students become job-ready for the manufacturing workforce – including at Bendix – and assist in their personal development, while helping to support the community at large,” says Carlos Hungria, Bendix chief operating officer. He serves as project sponsor for the company with Maria Gutierrez, director of corporate responsibility and sustainability. “Our work springs directly from Bendix’s mission to bolster our home communities in every way possible–in this case by increasing the opportunities for a vulnerable population of young people who don’t have jobs and aren’t in school.”
Statistics through the first 10 of 12 courses point to the program’s success, Bendix says. Students completing the course total 164, more than 80 percent of those who started it. Bendix has hired nearly 60 percent of those students. And of those hired, 60 percent remain as Bendix employees.
“We see the program as a success because of the changes we’ve watched it bring about in the students, and because of how it complements our hiring and workforce recruitment efforts for our Acuña operation,” Gutierrez says. “We’re proud of the impact the program has had on the community and for our business. We’re looking at ways to expand and further incorporate it into our business.”
