{"id":1480,"date":"2022-10-19T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T16:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2025-01-16T16:59:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T16:59:44","slug":"lakeland-fire-department-aims-to-interest-girls-to-male-dominated-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/lakeland-fire-department-aims-to-interest-girls-to-male-dominated-career","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland Fire Department Aims to Interest Girls to Male-Dominated Career"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>POLK COUNTY, Fla.&nbsp;\u2014&nbsp;A special set of girls got a unique hands-on experience from the Lakeland Fire Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nearly a dozen young women got a first-hand look at what it takes to be a firefighter. The students are from the&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/locations\/florida\/polk\" target=\"_blank\">Pace Center for Girls<\/a>&nbsp;in Lakeland, a year-round school for 11-7-year-old girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe hose, it was really nice learning how to hold it and seeing how they do it,\u201d said Sandra D, a Pace Center student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This field trip allows the girls to learn more about what it takes to be a firefighter and see the career potential for women in the fire service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEspecially now that I&#8217;m getting close to finishing high school, it\u2019s really nice to see what\u2019s out there,\u201d Sandra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is part of the Lakeland Fire Department\u2019s Igniting Change: Women in the Fire Service Campaign, aimed at attracting women to the male-dominated industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNationwide, only about 4% of firefighters are female and it\u2019s been that way as long as I\u2019ve been in the business, and nothing has changed in that. So, we\u2019re focusing a lot on that,\u201d said Doug Riley, Lakeland Fire Department Chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chief Riley said the Lakeland Fire Department currently has seven female firefighters out of the department\u2019s 188 total. He hopes this experience will motivate these young women to join their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAs a society, we sold firefighting as a big husky male profession, so we got to change that perception. The big thing, I think, is the women that actually come here, they\u2019re very successful in the job and they do a 30-plus year career,\u201d said Riley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abcactionnews.com\/news\/region-polk\/lakeland-fire-department-aims-to-interest-girls-to-male-dominated-career\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">View Source<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>POLK COUNTY, Fla.&nbsp;\u2014&nbsp;A special set of girls got a unique hands-on experience from the Lakeland Fire Department. Nearly a dozen young women got a first-hand look at what it takes to be a firefighter. The students are from the&nbsp;Pace Center for Girls&nbsp;in Lakeland, a year-round school for 11-7-year-old girls. \u201cThe hose, it was really nice [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"post_tag":[75],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-pace-polk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1484,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/1484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_tag?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}