Timaru South School and engineering company Bleeker & Weith held their first engineering club session last week.
The idea was conceived by Bleeker & Weith managing director James Forrest.
He said the company wanted to give back to the community and give children an opportunity to have a tinker and learn about the trade.
"A lot of people just don’t get the opportunity to muck around any more.
"It’s hard to find those opportunities, so we just want to expose the kids to as much as we can, get them interested and encourage them into thinking about trades.
"If we don’t start encouraging them now, there might be no engineers left in the future.
"It’s quite tricky being an engineering company and trying to think of ways to give back to the community.
Mr Forrest himself took charge of the first session and, along with fellow engineer Jared Condon, the pair had pupils getting their hands dirty stripping an old motor.
Mr Forrest said they were just testing the waters initially to see what the pupils would enjoy and respond to.
"We’re just feeling our way through it with the first session.
"It’s as much of a learning curve for us as it is for them.
"I remember back when kids were young they just loved pulling stuff to bits for the sake of pulling stuff to bits.
"They all seemed to be loving it and it appeared to be a hit."
He said it was very important for him and his company to give back to the community.
"The more we can get involved the better for us really and we want to be more than just an engineering company and provide a bit of a legacy there for South Canterbury.
"If we can go around and give the kids a bit of exposure to things they don’t normally get that’s great.
"It’s good for the guys at work too who come to help out. Hopefully, it will give them a whole new skill set."
The plan is to run a session on Fridays and provide the pupils with different activities and items to tinker with each week.
Mr Forrest said they planned to do things like having the pupils hammer and punch bag tags for themselves, changing tyres and even have them work on fixing things around the school such as leaky taps.
"A big thing for me when I started off in engineering was learning maths in a practical way and switching what you learnt from the classroom into real life.
"Hopefully, we can also get them some overalls as well so their mums and dads aren’t out hunting us when they return home with dirty clothes."
