Last school year saw Quilcene students working with the Community Boat Project to receive hands-on training in woodworking and maritime building on campus, without having to make the trek all the way to Port Townsend or Port Hadlock.

This school year, the Quilcene Workshop and Learning Center has evolved from the partnership between the Quilcene School District, the local 4-H and the Community Boat Project, with the aim of serving Quilcene and other Southern Jefferson County youths — if it can get its funding, insurance and facility space squared away.

Sailmaker Carey Seefeld is working with U.S. Marine Corps veterans Clark Hallam and Brandon Denning to provide a wood shop, maker-space and public community resource for everyone in South County, with a focus on offering shop classes to Quilcene High School students.

“We’re a team of skilled crafts-folk setting out to equip the next generation of South County with a trades-focused education, to encourage a more diversified home-grown local economy,” Seefeld said.

Seefeld cited statistics showing South County being left behind by not only Washington state as a whole, but also the rest of Jefferson County, with Jefferson County hosting more youth living in poverty, at 23 percent versus 16 percent, and lower graduation rates, at 77 percent versus 81 percent, than the state averages.

“And the communities of Quilcene and Brinnon are home to some of the most underserved families and youths in the county,” Seefeld said. “Closures of mill and timber-related industries have resulted in a loss of job opportunities and income for the area. The Port Townsend and Chimacum school districts are able to offer more services and programs for youth with special needs or interests or needs, but smaller communities lack their levels of funding and support.”

Seefeld hopes to foster “self-sufficiency, resilience and confidence” by connecting South County students with a roster of instructors that includes boat builders, furniture makers, canvas workers and sailmakers.

Hallam and Denning bring the bulk of the woodworking expertise, while Seefeld’s skill set includes some woodworking experience, but is more in canvas work. She intends to connect with other trade professionals in the area, from metalworkers and machinists to those in textiles and pottery.

The team has signed a lease on a former U.S. Forest Service sign-making shop, a two-story wooden building from the 1930s that’s since fallen into the custody of the Quilcene Fire Department, and sits behind the fire station’s office on Herbert Street. Among the needed repairs Seefeld listed is a new roof.

As of Aug. 23, Seefeld estimated roughly a dozen students had signed up for Workshop classes, but those classes can’t start until the Workshop resolves its issues with liability insurance and funding.

“We’d planned on having our team, plus volunteers, doing the majority of the work on the building, to get it up to snuff,” said Seefeld, who’d told attendees of an Aug. 3 meeting at the Quilcene Community Center that Homer Smith Insurance had quoted her a liability insurance figure of approximately $1,500 a year. “It turns out you can’t do that, as liability insurance won’t cover volunteer work. They need to be contractors.”

Seefeld is exploring the possibility of having Habitat For Humanity sponsor the Workshop as one of its building projects, but she admitted the news about the liability insurance “was a pretty big blow.”

As it stands, the Workshop’s current budget is almost entirely set aside for for the overhaul of its building, with Seefeld estimating a price tag of $30,000 to $40,000 to cover repairs and the Workshop’s first year of operations.

Neither Seefeld nor Hallam and Denning expected the Workshop to be a money-making proposition for them, since they all have existing sources of income outside of this project.

“Projects like this are what we naively hoped we would be doing in the service,” Hallam said.

Denning added: “And now, we’re finally in a position where we can give back to a local community in a meaningful way, by being involved in something bigger than ourselves, for the betterment of the next generation.”

Seefeld credited a host of mostly local contributors with pitching in to try and get the Workshop going, from fiscal sponsors “Count Me In For Quilcene” and the Port Townsend Rotary, to the Snohomish Community Center and the Quil Seed Pearls Giving Circle.

“Fundraising has been a very humbling experience,” Seefeld said. “We work with Jefferson Community Foundation, through their fantastic network of donors, and will be featured in the ‘Give Jefferson’ online catalog this fall.”

There’s even a GoFundMe page, at GoFundMe.com/theQuilceneWorkshopandLearningCenter, where Seefeld praised “friends and family” for donating more than $1,000.

“I say the experience has been humbling because it shows us that we are doing something the community is jazzed about and willing to back up with dollars and cents, and that there is a real need for a program like this in South County,” Seefeld said.

In the meantime, Seefeld credited Quilcene School District Superintendent Frank Redmon with suggesting an internship-style program, for students to learn the ropes of the behind-the-scenes elements that go into running a program like the Workshop itself.

“This is a promising idea, as it would bring students on board with what’s required to get the shop off the ground,” Seefeld said. “Students could participate in researching insurance, codes, networking, making materials lists and visiting lumber yards. Once we start work on the building, this insight will follow through in the overhaul of the space, and our students will know they played a critical role in making it happen.”