All too often these days we hear about businesses struggling to keep their doors open due to a lack of willing and qualified workers. And then there’s the flip side of that sad refrain: too many young people leaving the small, rural communities of Eastern Oregon in search of opportunities they just can’t find at home.

How refreshing it was, then, to hear about an innovative effort to flip the script on both of those depressing narratives.

We’re talking about Trades Day, a first-time event held at the Grant County Fairgrounds in John Day on March 21 and 22.

Put together by the Oregon State University Extension Service Open Campus, the Training & Employment Consortium and the Grant County Education Service District, Trades Day brought together employers in the building trades and related occupations such as logging, auto repair, electrical work and welding with potential employees in those fields.

Unions, trade schools and training organizations were also represented. There were panel discussions, live demonstrations, displays of heavy equipment and plenty of information about training and educational resources for people interested in pursuing a career in any number of good-paying blue collar occupations.

The first day was open to the general public, with the second day set aside for high school students. Some 250 students from around Grant County and neighboring regions, including a contingent from the Baker County town of Unity, were bused to the fairgrounds for the occasion.

And by all accounts, they loved it.

“I’m super happy to be able to ask questions and expand my knowledge,” Norbert Volny, a 17-year-old student from Long Creek School, told a Blue Mountain Eagle reporter after watching the manager of the John Day Les Schwab Tire Center remove a giant tire from a loader truck.

Many of the employers who took part in Trades Day came armed with job applications, and if even half of them came away with a motivated applicant or two, the event would have to be counted a resounding success.

But we’re even more enthused about the impact Trades Day could have on Grant County youth. It’s one thing to work hard in school and secure a diploma — and we hope all of them do that. But for some students, that kind of learning can seem abstract, the rewards unattainable. For those kids, Trades Day may have been the first time they caught a real glimpse of a future they could feel excited about.

Robert Waltenburg, superintendent of the Grant Education Service District, put it well.

“We need to expose kids to as much as we can,” he said, “to let them know that anything is possible.”

Amen to that.

Waltenburg and the event’s other organizers say they hope to make Trades Day an annual event in Grant County, and we hope they do. It strikes us as one of the best investments we can make in the region’s future.