7 November 2014

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Twenty students from Canon Lee School and David Young Community Academy are fresh from a visit to 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 give female students a first-hand 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, said: “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 took away an understanding of how they can use their STEM subjects towards an exciting career in food and drink manufacturing and give students the chance to network with employees at Nestlé.

Fiona Kendrick, CEO of Nestlé UK Ireland said: “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.“

Mark Rampling, Canon Lee Specialist Arts College said: “It is vital for our female cohort in the school to engage in STEM activities because females are still heavily influenced by parents and grandparents to work within typical job roles and professions. This sort of activity will offer them an insight in to different pathways for them.

“MyKindaCrowd have been very successful to date as it has increased the awareness of apprenticeships for the young people. This has supported the School greatly and has given the students different activity days in which have inspired them to think of further post-16 provision.“

The MyKindaCrowd programme is an exceptional opportunity for young students to get the inside track of engineering within food and drink and even the chance to 'win a work experience prize' at each of the challenge days. In turn, the FDF member companies will help the students to develop work skills and will benefit by establishing links with talented future recruits that offer fresh ideas and solutions.

Photography available on the FDF's Flickr Site

Notes for editors

1. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is the voice of the food and drink manufacturing industry – the UK's largest manufacturing sector.
2. MyKindaCrowd has embarked on a global mission: to connect young people with the world of work and enhance their future employability. Companies set challenges; young people respond with ideas; and get rewarded with work experience. After one year of working together, Nestle and MyKindaCrowd have reached a total of 1,355 young people directly, and almost 9,000 young people engaged online. 73.6%of students felt more confident about the variety of careers on offer to them, and 100% said this was a great opportunity to build their skills.
3. Nestlé UK is a subsidiary of Nestlé SA, the world's leading nutrition, health and wellness company, employing 8,000 employees across the 23 sites within the UK and Irish food industry.
4. The MEng Food Engineering course at Sheffield Hallam University has been developed by Graduate Excellence, a partnership between the Food and Drink Federation, the National Skills Academy for Food Drink and Sheffield Hallam University - www.foodengineer.co.uk
5. Your Life Stem pledge - In May 2014, the government set out national ambitions for greater participation in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) especially amongst women. FDF and our members support the new campaign called 'Your Life' by creating our own pledge to attract women into STEM careers in our industry.

About MyKindaCrowd

1. MyKindaCrowd was established in 2011 to transform the way young people connect with the world of work. The social enterprise company works with 4500 schools and over 90% of universities in the UK, providing online industry 'Challenges', physical workshops, work-experiences, and jobs completely free.
2. Companies set real-life online industry challenges, supported by face-to-face workshops attended by company employees. Students show-case their skills and respond to the challenges. Good responses get rewarded with work-experiences.
3. MyKindaCrowd has set up and ran challenges for entrepreneurs, government organisations, charities and some of the UK's leading brands which have led to thousands of industry work experiences for students with companies including BT, Cisco, Lloyds, Accenture, KPMG, Tesco, NCS and many more.
4. It has won the UK's most prestigious Social Enterprise awards for connecting with diverse groups of young people.

For More information, please contact:

FDF Fleur Williamson on 020 7420 7120 pressoffice@fdf.org.uk

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