I am delighted to report on the first NAMTEC Gender Awareness Local Event which was held earlier this week. I would like to give special thanks to Nick Hollinshead and Tecan for the provision of the slides showing micro components and TWI (Sheffield) for the loan of their microscope. The items aided the initial attraction to the NAMTEC stand which then facilitated conversations around the Masmicro project itself.

The event ‘Hot Metal, Cool future’ careers, invited 5000 students ranging in age from 13 to those in Higher education and enabled young people to come face to face with potential employees, along with organisations like NAMTEC who were able to advise on current research and development activities and how these are shaping the future. The event was held at Hallam Arena in Sheffield on the 1st and 2nd November 2005.

With so many career options available, it is vital for us to ensure that careers in engineering, manufacturing and metals, is amongst the top career choices available to young people. The event aimed to show that old images of the industry are now very outdated, and that today's businesses are vibrant companies who are seizing new challenges to ensure that the technologies are constantly improved and that they are keeping abreast of cutting edge research and development.

The NAMTEC stand attracted numerous groups of young people who were tasked with trying to identify both the slide contents and their uses…
'wow cool', 'what they are real tools', 'they are class', 'Mint' …were just a few of the comments that were made. A few students actually stated that it had opened their eyes to alternative career options that they would now consider before making any final career decisions.

This event was extremely useful, not only in the dissemination of the project, but also in the number of contacts made with schools, colleges and organisations who are also seeking to raise the awareness to students (in particular female students) of careers in these sectors. This will aid the attendance of the next local event which is to be held in 2006. I have attached a couple of photographs from the day.

One main point to note was that it was extremely useful to have ‘things to do’ on the stand, in general the more exhibits, the more interesting the stand becomes, thus attracting more people. With this in mind, it would be greatly appreciated if partners could allow exhibits to be available to each other when running events.

If anyone would like any further information on either the event, or how to organise your own local event, please do not hesitate to contact me either by email helen.king@namtec.co.uk or by telephone on +44 1709 722470.

Click images for larger version