When discussing our Hydrogen Village programme and the future of heat, where better to start than speaking with our future generations?
With this in mind, we’ve been really pleased over the past few weeks to take part in virtual work experience sessions and careers days across three schools, engaging more than 220 students at Whitby High School, Ellesmere Port Catholic High School and Helsby High School.
What was involved?
For the virtual work experience sessions, more than 40 students from Whitby High School and Ellesmere Port Catholic High School met members of Cadent and British Gas’s engineering and stakeholder engagement teams.
Throughout a two-week period the students heard about the Hydrogen Village programme, the benefits it can bring to their local community, and the work we’re doing to help reach a net zero future.
Our team developed a project for the young participants to work on independently – providing mentoring and support to enable them to create a plan on how they would engage with their local community about the Hydrogen Village programme.
Positive feedback
Roderick Hamilton, Pledge Facilitator at the Cheshire and Warrington Pledge, which exists to bring together employers and young people to improve careers education and develop future talent pipelines, explained:
“The young people taking part had their eyes opened to both the complexity and the diversity of skillsets involved in real work projects, and gained insight into how STEM organisations (and large companies in general) depend on people with a huge range of specialisms to deliver grand results.
“Developing understanding and experience of multidisciplinary collaboration will stand these young people’s future careers in good stead, and the Cadent project fostered this while also providing strong positive attention and role models, giving the young people new clear ideas about potential future employers, industries and the roles they might pursue.
“Feedback from both schools’ careers teams has been very positive, and they are both hoping to do much more work with the team in future.”
Future Careers Day
On Thursday 21 July Cadent attended Helsby High School as part of Future Careers Day, hosting around two hundred learners from Year 10. The event focused on the Hydrogen Village and the potential careers associated with the hydrogen economy.
Guest speakers included:
- Kimberley Walters (Customer Liaison Officer for the Whitby Hydrogen Village programme)
- Eleanor Lewis who is studying for a PhD in Industrial Decarbonisation Skills
- Dr Nicholas Backstrom Cogent who has a PhD in Hydrogen and has experience working as Project Manager in Decarbonisation.
The event consisted of a Hydrogen Village presentation which described the programme and the potential for Hydrogen in decarbonising heat, followed by an interactive quiz and guest presentations.
The event closed with an activity which focused on the variety of roles and levels of employment within Cadent, giving details of the qualifications required, including entry routes and apprenticeships.
Looking forward
Building connections with the local community is really important, and it doesn’t stop here.
We’re focused on enabling local people to ask questions about the Hydrogen Village programme, gain understanding, and help shape the programme to ensure it brings the benefits to the community and it’s fit for purpose.
We’re continuing to build relationships with lots of local stakeholders, from hosting drop-in sessions in the local community, to developing a Hydrogen Experience Centre in Ellesmere Port where people can visit the team and find out more about the hydrogen heating journey.
The Whitby Hydrogen Village team has now spoken to the majority of the residents who live and work in the proposed hydrogen village area within Whitby, and continues to be here for questions and conversations.
If you’d like to find out more about the Hydrogen Village, get in touch:
