STATESBORO, Ga. () — The state of Georgia was awarded a $6.1 million grant for apprenticeships programs at technical colleges within the state.

Apprenticeship programs are work based training programs that allow students to get hands-on experience. Vice President of Economic Development at Savannah Tech, Tal Loos said the apprenticeship programs at Savannah Tech allow students to accelerate their professional careers.

“It gives us the opportunity to provide more support to the student and or the company to allow them to be able to build a bridge and build that workforce force pipeline that is really needed in today’s world,” Loos said.

The $6.2 million is the largest federal grant for apprenticeship programs in Georgia’s history. Loos said that this allows for them to relieve some of the financial burden off the students.

“The big thing here that is, being able to help offset, you know, tuition costs, tooling or, you know, maybe transportation,” Loos said. “Some of our programs like welding, for example going in there, there’s safety equipment like a welder helmet. So, if we can have that funding to help offset that, it allows an individual now to come into that program and be successful and then be successful on the job.”

Apprenticeship Program Manager for Technical College System of Georgia Danny Mitchell said that a fund dedicated towards apprenticeship programs allows them to focus on the quality of them throughout the state.

“An apprenticeship program opens up a door for a young man or woman where they didn’t know a door existed,” Mitchell said. “Now that we have an opportunity and really be able to focus on the quality of the apprenticeship programs and bringing those young men and women into those high demand careers across the state.”

Officials told that this fund will help support the growth the Georgia apprenticeship programs have been receiving over the past few years.