Jaguar Land Rover has revealed that its award winning outreach scheme, Inspiring Tomorrow’s Engineers, engaged with 328,000 young people in 2013.
Jaguar Land Rover, winner of TM’s Manufacturing in Action Award for 2013, confirmed yesterday that it had increased to number of children contacted via its Inspiring Tomorrow’s Engineers programme by 100,000 compared to 2012.
Inspiring Tomorrow’s Engineers is a STEM outreach programme which encourages children to study the enabling subjects required to become an engineer and highlights exciting careers to be had in industry.
The programme engaged with children in a variety of ways throughout 2013, asking them to engage in engineering challenges including the Jaguar Maths in Motion Challenge. 100,000 children took part in this event alone.
Meanwhile, more than 21,500 students visited Jaguar Land Rover’s Education Business Partnership Centres at its five UK design, engineering and manufacturing facilities and 767 participated in work experience.
JLR’s schools and education outreach programme is supported by over 2,600 employees who spent 11,251 hours supporting school visits, challenges and outreach events during 2013. Jaguar Land Rover employees have visited more than 300 schools over the past year.
Speaking at the launch of Big Bang Fair, the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths for young people in the UK, Jonathan Garrett, CSR Director, Jaguar Land Rover said: “It is critical that we attract talented young people to become the next generation of engineers and technologists to support our ambitious growth plans.
I am delighted we achieved such huge growth in our education engagement last year which feeds young people into our talent pipeline.”
Mr Garrett is determined to build further on JLR’s 2013 achievements however and said that the company’s participation in the Big Bang Fair was an important part of this. JLR, a lead sponsor of Big Bang, is running hands-on activities for young people attending the fair which was launched yesterday and continues over the weekend.
The JLR stand at Big Bang includes a fully immersive 3D design experience which gives children a taster of the high tech vehicle design processes employed by the iconic British car brands.
A particular focus behind JLR’s involvement in this year’s Big Bang is to improve the image of engineering with girls and yesterday and 2nd year higher apprentice from the firm, Alice Belcher, took part in a ‘Women in STEM Careers’ debate with education and childcare secretary, Liz Truss who also spoke at the launch of the fair.
