Nestlé hosts students
A group of 20 students from Canon Lee School and David Young Community Academy have recently visited the York-based factory of well-known food producer Nestlé UK & Ireland, as part of the BIS See Inside Manufacturing initiative and a partnership with youth skills initiative MyKindaCrowd.
The partnership aims to bring businesses and young people together, to promote careers in food and drink engineering and to give female students a taste of the food and drink industry – the UK’s largest manufacturing sector.
Nestlé UK & Ireland signed up to work with the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and MyKindaCrowd to deliver exclusive site visits with practical challenges for the year 12 and 13 students with A-Level STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. The students were challenged to design and advertise a campaign encouraging young women to pursue a STEM career in the food and drink industry.
The students also heard from two female Nestlé UK & Ireland apprentices and enjoyed a tour of the York Insight and Learning Centre.
Angela Colesill, director of employment & skills at FDF, says:
“The skills agenda is a top priority for our industry and we are proud that our members continue to support careers initiatives such as the MyKindaCrowd engineering visits to ensure a solid succession plan for employment in our sector.
“At the heart of this collaboration is the aim to raise awareness for the industry-backed MEng Food Engineering degree at Sheffield Hallam University as well as FDF’s Women into STEM pledge as part of the Your Life campaign, which encourages women to pursue science or engineering careers in food and drink.”
Students gained an understanding of how they can use their STEM subjects towards an exciting career in food and drink manufacturing and gave them the chance to network with employees at Nestlé.
Fiona Kendrick, CEO of Nestlé UK & Ireland says: “We are committed to bring STEM careers to life and are proud to support the BIS See Inside Manufacturing initiative and Tomorrow’s Engineers Week with activities to inspire and inform young people. It is essential that businesses play their part and I am delighted to see that more and more companies are engaging with schools and colleges to help highlight the vast and diverse number of rewarding careers on offer.”
