The main mission is to provide the woodworker with portable, personal, permanent records of their achievements as a professional -- a "passport" to career success.
WCA is a national credential program. Woodworkers can showcase their in-plant woodworking skills and earn credentials that are recognized throughout North America.
Woodworkers can elect to receive a "Woodwork Passport" in which they gather "tool stamps" validating their tool operation level proficiencies throughout their career.
Woodworkers demonstrate their accumulated skills against a consistent industry standard. Employers have a mechanism to evaluate employees' skills.
The Woodwork Passport advances the knowledge, skill and professionalism of the workforce needed to sustain and grow the woodwork industry.
Credentialing
WCA is a national Passport and Credentialing Program which provides a portable credential for individuals in the woodwork industry to quantify and qualify their ability to operate woodwork tools properly and safely to create high quality wood products. There are hundreds of skill certifications/passport stamps with up to 3 levels of achievement for each operation. Certifications are not tied to specific occupations or jobs. Rather, WCA provides a menu of certifications from which employers can select the tools and tool operation level relevant to their jobs or training needs.
The Program is being rolled out in many states and provinces, and will be fully operational in 2013. A WCA Passport will be similar to a U.S. Passport - a tangible booklet with pages on which to obtain "tool" stamps, like country stamps, that verify the individual's tool proficiencies allowing them to "document their skills". WCA maintains a national database of passport holders and their tool stamps and verify passports during travel to new jobs and/or training.
Woodworkers receive passport stamps through a performance assessment that will be fair, defensible, clear, teachable, and electronic. A woodworker's skills and knowledge are assessed by a WCA Skill Evaluator who observes the candidate as he/she uses a tool and then inspect the final product, ensuring that the woodworker's technique and product complies with WCA standards. Skill Evaluators record and submit their evaluations to WCA electronically and issue the appropriate stamp in the Woodwork Passport.
Skill Evaluators can represent a can represent a state, a local area, a training institution, a profit or non-profit organization, or an individual company. Chief Evaluators certify the skills and knowledge of the Skill Evaluators and grant them the authority to issue the appropriate passport stamps. Skill Evaluators then have the authority to evaluate woodworkers on the tools for which they are qualified. WCA is pleased that the first group of Skill Evaluators is in place. Training continues throughout North America.
