Rotarians in the Washington, D.C., area are greasing the wheels of vocational education by giving budding automotive technicians the tools – literally – to do the job.

In partnership with the Washington Area New Automobile Dealers Association (WANADA), 18 clubs in District 7620 have funded partial scholarships to a two-year apprenticeship program and purchased $1,000 worth of car-repair tools for each graduate.

In conquering camshafts and crankcases, more than 175 graduates have obtained certification from the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE).

“I tell everybody I interview, ‘This is a free lunch,’” says the key recruiter for the effort, Archie Avedisian, a WANADA member relations specialist and a member of the Rotary Club of Friendship Heights, Md. “You’re taking unemployed people who would have not been productive to the community and giving them a job. Our constituency is made up of high school kids, veterans, unemployed people, and legal immigrants.”

Apprentices are paid at least $9 an hour, and a sponsoring dealership pays $1,000 per semester toward enrollment at a community college. WANADA, a grant from Ford Motor Co., and Rotarians help pay the rest, says Avedisian, a former vocational service chair for the district. Apprentices spend a combined 40 hours a week in school and on the job.

Program graduate Shawn Stanley, of Middletown, Md., a former U.S. Marine Corps bugler and an ASE master technician at Martens Volvo in Washington since early 2006, says the program is ideal for military veterans.

“I had a chance to work and learn, and that’s why I went with this program,” says Stanley, who notes that the cost of a technical school – or the low pay and the longer duration of a typical apprenticeship – would have posed a financial hardship.

“Without the benefit of the program, if I were to guess, I’d still be working at an independent shop” that might lack training opportunities, says graduate Kyle Tankersley, a full-line technician at a Fitzgerald Auto Malls outlet in Frederick, Md. “I can almost guarantee [that independent shops offer] lower pay and less knowledge than what you’d get at a dealership.”

William Copp, a District 7620 assistant governor and member of the Rotary Club of Capitol Hill (Washington, D.C.), calls the program an excellent way for private-sector and humanitarian organizations to work together. “And,” he notes, “it costs the Rotary clubs very little in financial outlay.”