It’s often said, that to create a culture of safety, you must build it from the ground up. Landon Stubbs is doing just that. As the woods and building trades teacher at Great Falls High School, he’s not only tasked to teach constructions skills, but keep his students safe in the process.  

One way he keeps his students safe is through Montana State Fund’s (MSF) Growing a Safer Montana Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Grant program. The program awards middle and high school classrooms up to $850 in PPE like eye protection, hearing protection, gloves, and welding gear.

The PPE program is part of MSF’s Growing a Safer Montana initiative to improve Montana’s workplace safety culture. The initiative teaches and reinforces positive safety in the classroom before young students enter Montana’s workforce. This is the third year Stubbs has received the grant.

“For me and the students, it has helped create a new safety culture that has been lacking in our state. There needs to be a change in our culture to not only promote safety but make it a priority,” said Stubbs.

In addition to Great Falls High School, 36 other high schools and 11 middle school classrooms received safety gear.  At the start of the 2021 school year, MSF partnered with A&M Fire and Safety in Butte to deliver 2,552 pairs of safety glasses and over 1,400 pairs of gloves to the eligible classrooms

Selected classrooms cab also use a portion of their grant money to order specialized safety equipment such as machine guards, welding curtains or specialized PPE.

Since the program’s 2017 inception, over $100,000 worth safety gear has benefited 11,000 students.

However, MSF realizes there is still work to be done. Montana’s injury rate has remained consistent from 2018 to 2019 at 3.9 injuries for every 100 workers. This back to back incident rate is higher than the national average of 2.8 for every 100 workers.

MSF is hopeful the Growing a Safer Montana initiative will continue to be a catalyst to lower injury rates for our next generation of Montana’s workers.

2021 High School Grant Recipients

2021 Middle School Grant Recipients