EDT celebrates 250K Industrial Cadets Experiences
Earlier this month, we celebrated the milestone of delivering 250K Industrial Cadets Experiences across the UK at an event held in London with our Board of Trustees, EDT Staff, our partners and student alumni. This monumental occasion was also a chance for us to announce our ambition to reach 1 million by 2035.
During the event, EDT CEO Julie Feest, Chair of the Industrial Cadets Board of Trustees Elena Rodríguez Falcón, and Ambassador Industrial Cadets Jon Bolton delivered a brilliant presentation of EDT's journey so far and how our programmes have impacted many young people across the UK.
We also heard wonderful speeches from our youngest Ambassador for Industrial Cadets Juhie Radia, Industrial Cadets Platinum Award winner and Engineer Alicia Neal-Useche, and EDT Alumni and Mechanical Engineering graduate Zenisha Peterkin who spoke about their achievements and how EDT has supported them through their individual STEM journeys.
When speaking about the impact Industrial Cadets has had on her STEM pathway, Juhie said, “Industrial Cadets is important to me because it helped me become work ready in my career. My parents didn't have any corporate jobs and I never had any corporate work experience until I found EDT, and they really gave me a platform for me to learn skills that would really propel me in a professional life. Since then, I've been able to participate in the Y7, which is the youth engagement group for the G7. I've delivered well to Downing Street, I've been nominated for other awards, I've spoken at the Ancestry Conference, and none of that would be impossible without EDT and the Industrial Cadets.”
As well as hearing from the young people that have benefitted from participating in Industrial Cadets programmes, the event also highlighted how our partner companies help us deliver our various schemes.
Tony Ellender, Professional Development Manager at Balfour Beatty and fellow of The 5% Club said, “There's a clear synergy between the companies in The 5% Club and the aims of Industrial Cadets and The Engineering Development Trust: both are concerned about getting young people into exciting STEM careers. They're also all about making sure that people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds have got those same opportunities as everybody else. Coming up with the partnership that's been created, it means that EDT Industrial Cadets and The 5% Club who work together both for the benefit of those companies, but most importantly of all for the young people that are looking for jobs in those companies.”
We would like to thank everyone who has helped us reach this major milestone. Without the support from our partner companies, funders, Industrial Cadets Trustees, educational institutions, volunteers and donors, we wouldn't have been able to reach so many young people across the UK. Now that we have hit 250K, we look forward to what lies ahead on our journey to delivering 1 million Industrial Cadets Experiences.
