The Eastern Advanced Manufacturing Alliance (EAMA) is coordinating a project that brought together 14 local high school teams and manufacturers to educate students on career opportunities in manufacturing and to provide information on the skills required to be successful in the manufacturing field.  

The project’s goal is to educate students, teachers and parents about the manufacturing industry by pairing high school teams with local manufacturing companies to create videos that showcase the theme “Connecticut Manufacturing – Join the Evolution!”   The video entries are posted at – http://eamainc.com/vote.html  and viewers are encouraged to vote for their favorite videos.   Viewers can vote once daily.

The competition is open to EAMA member companies, primarily located in New London and Windham counties.  While producing the videos, students learned about many careers including milling, machining, welding, metal fabricating, plastics processing, molding and assembly.  There is currently a great need for skilled workers in many manufacturing companies.  The videos outline the advances in technologies that manufacturing companies are utilizing to stay competitive.  Schools and students also formed alliances with local manufacturers.  

The event culminates in a film festival – named The EAMY Awards – to be held at 6 p.m. April 26 at Three Rivers Community College.   The videos will be screened and judged by a panel of judges from the manufacturing, consulting, and video production industries.  There is no charge to attend the film festival but pre-registration is requested.  

In creating their project videos, students learned about local manufacturing companies, the job functions, skills required to be successful in different professions and then had to master video production, editing, development of the message for their target audience and promoting the videos within their high school and local community.

Winners will receive a variety of cash prizes and trophies.  The winners of the Best Overall Video receive a trophy that was “manufactured” from component parts of each of the participating manufacturers.  This one of a kind trophy travels each year with the winner of successive competitions.  Last year’s winning team was comprised of students from Killingly High School who were paired with Web Industries in Dayville. For more info, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.