WANADA’s longstanding efforts to provide auto technician education and training to ambitious career aspirants through member dealerships has benefitted significantly by financial gifts to WANADA’s Auto Dealer Education Institute (ADEI) emanating from a variety of philanthropic organizations. Over the past seven years, there have been 34 such gifting organizations, yielding as much as $87,000 per year on occasion, with 2019 returns on pace to hit a new annual record.
Besides any number of banks and foundation benefactors, local service clubs around the region, namely Rotary and Kiwanis, have contributed generously to ADEI, prompted in many cases by the dogged efforts of individual WANADA members who pushed the clubs and institutions they’re involved with to help support the institute.
Calling upon his considerable leadership and expertise from his earlier years as the director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Washington, WANADA’s Archie Avedisian has single-handedly lined up all of the philanthropic financial support, and has done so for many years. The most recent example was last month, where the Bethesda Women’s Club pledged funds to ADEI at one of their regular meetings, marking the occasion by hosting Mr. Avedisian and ADEI founder and former WANADA President and CEO Gerry Murphy to present the career training programs to BWC members.
“When philanthropic groups like the BWC hear how the dealers through ADEI inspire young men, and, in more recent years, young women into dealership careers, they’re surprised and impressed,” said Avedisian. “It’s totally a win/win situation for all concerned, especially the job recruits, who, in addition to getting dealership employment, receive ADEI education and training on a scholarship basis at community colleges like Montgomery College in Rockville,” he said.
The inspiration for WANADA creating and implementing its ADEI was in direct response to the technician shortage crisis in the auto industry.
“WANADA was in a position to hit the tech shortage head on by auto technician training it first implemented years earlier through the public schools in Montgomery and Fairfax counties,” said Murphy. “From these high school programs came the college technician training, in conjunction with ASE Technician Certification, that ADEI successfully put in place subsequently,” he said.
Harold Redden of Fitzgerald Auto Malls, who chairs the ADEI Board of Directors, commended Steve Boden, who heads up the Auto Trades Foundation Program in the Montgomery County Public Schools for his leadership in taking ADEI’s tech training to the college level. “You simply don’t succeed with career programs at the college level without committed educators like Steve Boden leading the effort,” Redden said. “WANADA dealers, accordingly, support ADEI because of what it delivers: career education that successfully answers the challenge of where the next generation of auto techs will come from.”
For information on ADEI technician training and education, WANADA member dealers can contact Joe Koch at (202) 237-7200 or jk@wanada.org.
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