Kevin Cook, Freeport-McMoRan community development manager was one of the speakers Thursday.

By Mary Alice Murphy

The Silver City-Grant County Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting on Sept. 1 was sold out. People were turned away for lack of seats.

Kevin Cook, Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. manager of southwestern New Mexico community development led off the talk.

"My original intent was to speak only about Freeport's program to develop soft skills in middle school and high school students," Cook said. "But we will also hear from Eric Bower, the general manager of Tyrone Mine, about what's going on with Freeport worldwide."

Cook said that young people seem to have inabilities to cope "with things we take for granted. Soft skills is synonymous with people skills and includes answering the phone, addressing envelopes and others. We are collaborating with three schools on critical thinking, emotional abilities and leadership skills. Many employers find soft skills are needed as well as hard skills."

"We formed a group to address to issue," he said. "We've been communicating with others across the state doing something similar. We have a community partnership panel of those who are finding it hard to locate and hire adequate labor. Priscilla Lucero and Emily Schilling of the Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments got together with us, and we've been plotting and scheming to do workshops for middle to high school students."

The partners comprise Freeport, Workforce Connections, the SWNMCOG, WNMU, James Marshall of the town of Silver City, Gary Stailey of JPPO, Dave Chandler of Aldo Leopold Charter School (program director), Jason Ping of Opportunity High School and Dean Spurgeon, Cliff School principal.

"We are recognizing that we are at a point where we need more business involvement," Cook said. "We hope to work with young people, so we can have some sort of job fair at the end of the school year. We want them to understand what is expected of them when it comes to a job."

The group will also identify students that are juniors and seniors at the three schools to learn to be peer trainers to teach the work force readiness course.

In the spring the plan is to create teams of three studentsG