CHICAGO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Sitting in the safety training room of CRRC Chicago facility, 12 boys from Harlan Community Academy, a high school in the southern suburbs of Chicago, were excited after watching slides of introduction to the Chinese railcar maker.
They were curious about everything: How the car is put on the track? Is CRRC making cars for Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)? Does CRRC make buses?
The boys were having a career exploration on Friday at the Chinese facility in Chicago, jointly organized by China General Chamber of Commerce Chicago (CGCC Chicago) and Youth Guidance, a counseling and a violence prevention program in Chicago committed to school-based programs that enable children to overcome obstacles, focus on education and ultimately succeed in school and in life since 1924.
Site visit at the facility later gave the boys a real-time experience. They followed carefully every procedure of the railcar assembling while a CRRC guide explained the process to them.
"Visiting this beautiful facility was to get a firsthand experience or behind the scenes of the trains I commute to and from school ... and to get an idea of the production of it, so I can know who is in charge of making sure the doors don't close on me or just to get an idea of like how the trains are made," said Jake Elliott, a sophomore at Harlan Community Academy.
Elliott's primary hope is to attend college, but he does not resist the idea of working at CRRC. "CRRC would definitely be a choice for me because I like mechanism and like things of that nature and they have a lot of electricity going on, a lot of panel boards and stuff like around that area. So I would definitely consider CRRC," he added.
Teamwork is what he has learned from the trip. Elliott told Xinhua: "Partnering and teamwork are very important for production overall, because the people who they're making the trains for, they have to make sure everything is safe ... They're doing it safely, efficiently."
Jamonte Harris, a senior at the school, echoed Elliott's words. "Teamwork makes the dreamers. So not only one person can do the job by himself, everybody has to pitch in and take apart in what a company will do as a whole team," he said.
"It's a great idea for our students to just see something different, and to see how our everyday products are being made," said Randy Johnson, who is in charge of a "Becoming A Man" program at Youth Guidance.
"We try to teach our young men to always have some sort of goal. In order to have a goal, you have to see something, you have to see opportunities that you can connect with," Johnson told Xinhua. "That's why we take these opportunities so our boys can just have this experience ... (can) see a quick glimpse at what you could be doing 10 years down the line."
Ernest Stanford acts as production supervisor at CRRC Chicago facility. He told Xinhua frankly that the facility is a groundbreaking company right now and is trying to come up off the group and build a business that would "love for all of the citizens of Chicago to have a part of it."
"It is part of our responsibility as building a future here also builds careers for the citizens of Chicago," he added.
"It's a rewarding career for me," he said proudly. "We encourage the citizens of Chicago to come in and also try to start a rewarding career here."
