CBIA BizCast host Ali Warshavsky speaks to Penn Globe president Marcia LaFemia about her plans to transform a Fair Haven building into a manufacturing training center.

LaFemina applied for a grant to rehabilitate a vacant building and create a place of opportunity struggling to find a career path in the area.

If the grant is approved, she said Penn Globe employees, as well as other manufacturers in the state, will be hired to train students there.

“It makes sense to have manufacturers training manufacturing students,” LaFemina said.

“That's not always the way that it is. A lot of time it's educators or others learning to teach the students. The idea was to get a broader scope of the manufacturing experience–that manufacturers are actually teaching.”

LaFemina said most of the manufacturers who will train students will be bilingual. The students will produce components for many industries in Connecticut making it financially possible to keep the program running.

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