At this year’s recent Vertikal Days, Liebherr-Great Britain sponsored the two-day ‘My Future My Choice’ event for the second consecutive year.
‘My Future My Choice’ is a charity with the aim of promoting careers in engineering to young people between the ages of 5 and 16 and pupils from Allanson Street Primary, St Helens, and Maghull High School, Liverpool, took part at this year’s event working with staff and apprentices from Liebherr-Great Britain.
At the recent Vertikal Days exhibition at Haydock Park, Liebherr was proud to sponsor the two-day ‘My Future My Choice’ event for the second consecutive year.
‘My Future My Choice’ is a charity that aims to promote engineering to young people between the ages of 5 and 16.
The children involved are given an insight into what a career in engineering might entail by participating in a practical project that brings schools and businesses together.
This year a group of pupils from Allanson Street Primary School, St Helens, aged between 9 and 10 years old took part on day one, whilst pupils aged between 14 and 15 years old from Maghull High School in Liverpool took part on day two.
On both days, Director of MFMC and Workshop Leader Hugh Thomas gave an introduction and demonstrated the principles of hydraulics and pulley systems before the young people were divided into teams.
Working with a Liebherr-Great Britain apprentice or staff member, they were then tasked with building a crane from a cardboard template with the hydraulics simulated using a system of air-filled syringes and pipes.
Teams were given the opportunity to visit all the exhibition stands to research actual working cranes and gather as many facts about them as they could before the afternoon’s ‘Crane Off’ competition when each team had to operate their crane to pick up a ball and drop it into a bucket.
The winners were the fastest to complete the task and prizes were presented at the Liebherr stand at the end of the day.
The young people were also given the chance to take the mic and sum up their experiences of the day and everyone was given a goody bag to take away with them.
Hugh Thomas summed up the event by saying, “Liebherr apprentices, interns and senior staff are passionate about making school children aware that mechanical engineering and lifting technology offers a rewarding and exciting career and lifestyle.
Working with 90 children across the two days was a team from Liebherr that was an international mix of ages, experiences and job roles.
On the second day they inspired 20 out of 30 fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds to say that they would consider an apprenticeship with Liebherr as a career option and would be writing for more information when they approach school leaving age.
The Liebherr team hit all the right notes with school students from primary and secondary schools.
They mentored them through ‘build and operate’ challenges in small teams and assisted them with humour and energy so that the students learnt and completed tasks energetically.
The transformation in the school students from the start to the end of the day was wonderful to see.”
Ed Hudson, General Manager of crane After-Sales for Liebherr-Great Britain, commented that “again it was a pleasure to work with My Future My Choice at Vertikal Days.
Our apprentices, interns and staff all appreciated and enjoyed the experience of promoting the industry to these young people and took away some excellent experiences from it.
The project certainly triggered the imagination of many of the young people from the two schools who we hope will be talking to Liebherr about engineering careers in a few years’ time”
For more information visit www.liebherr.co.uk
