Aaron Dykstra is a high-end custom bicycle frame maker with a particular skill in welding. He bypassed college and went into the military before starting on his professional path.
The Roanoker says not everyone coming out of high school wants to or is ready to go to a four-year college, or any college for that matter. But they need to have the skills to find decent-paying jobs and that’s where he hopes The Making Foundation can make a difference.
“I wanted to do something that was a little bit more community-involved,” said Aaron Dykstra, who has made custom bikes for 8 years for “people all over the world,” after moving to Roanoke. While becoming involved with the manufacturing world he said one subject kept coming up: “the huge generation gap in how we make manufacturing [jobs] attractive to youth.”
There are some “exciting programs,” said Dykstra, that teach skills applicable to the trade at Roanoke County’s Burton Center, in the city at Ro-Tech, and at Virginia Western Community College, where the Mechatronics program has drawn praise from Governor Terry McAuliffe and companies like Eldor Manufacturing and Deschutes Brewery that now have plans to put roots down in the valley.
Still, Dykstra said programs that teach skills for some of the more “dirty jobs” are lacking. He calls it a “real imbalance” and the reason he has opened The Maker Mart in a storefront at 1205 Patterson Avenue SW. Here he will teach Roanoke City middle school students (and 9th graders from William Fleming High School) about using hand tools and how to actually make something – or take it apart – “in a completely fun, non-traditional environment.”
He calls it an “analog environment, working with your hands, problem solving, really priming that pump.” Dykstra said he wants to teach problem solving and the “soft skills” that can help young people not going to college learn skills that can get them on the path to a good-paying job, perhaps by seeking a trade certification while in high school.
The Maker Mart will help prepare those students for the machine shop, carpentry, and welding with classes and other courses at the high school level so they are not arriving without skills. “It’s something that’s really missing,” said Dykstra, who feels it will help address the issue of upward mobility in Roanoke. “If you are born into poverty in Roanoke City you are 18 percent less likely to leave poverty than the previous generation,” he declares, “and that’s something that needs attention.
Roanoke City public schools will pay the tuition for 65 initial students that Dykstra says he will work with after the school day is done. As a non-profit, he can also raise money for The Making Foundation and the Maker Mart, named as a nod to the former store that occupied that space.
Roanoke mayor Sherman Lea helped cut the ribbon at The Maker Mart in late September.
The jobs are out there, said Dykstra – he points to signs outside the Freight Car America plant on Campbell Avenue that advertise the need for certified welders. “It’s just a matter of connecting the dots and that’s where I saw an opportunity to do that . . . I own two businesses and it’s just [from] working with my hands. I want to expose that to these kids. There’s a world of opportunity.”
By Gene Marrano
