Rome, GA welding class assists Peru village

Get some good training, do some good in the world -- from the Rome, GA News

It wasn’t the typical project assigned to welding classes at Floyd County Technical High School.

In fact, students laughed when metals teacher Chesley Chambers explained they would be building a 300-pound pressure cooker for a small Peruvian school that needed the device to produce soy milk for cafeteria lunches.

“I thought he was joking. I didn’t think they’d be sending something we made to Peru,” said Jeremy Master, a senior in the class.

Yet Chambers wasn’t kidding. During a mission trip this June to the desert town of Chincha, Peru, Chambers visited the 150-student, private Trinity School, where teachers told him they wanted to be able to serve their students milk with their lunches instead of water.

A giant pressure cooker would allow the school to make enough soymilk for their students and to sell some to cover the costs of production. Chambers quickly volunteered his class to build the contraption, he said.

“This is a real life application. They get to use the skills they’ve learned to benefit others,” he said. “Where else would they get to work on something like this?”