The Industrial Cadets Bronze Project is a 12 week STEM project involving around 20 hours of work from students in Year 9. It helps students to develop key skills for learning, life, and work and to inform their subject choices and careers. Most of the projects have an environmental focus.

This year much of the project was virtual, with launch webinars and online assessment and graduation events. The teams were mentored by engineers from Leonardo, a key player in aerospace, defence and security based in Luton, who met the girls each week to keep track of their progress and help them to find solutions for their chosen projects. This gave the students a very valuable opportunity to work with professional engineers. They also had ‘Meet the mentor’ live Q&A sessions to find out about the work of the different sponsoring companies.

Our two teams undertook the following projects:

MY SCHOOL IS AN ISLAND – team, Eco Cadets

Task: An island is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Your challenge is to think of your school as an island and transform it so it can be a fully functioning island setting. Use your imagination and creative skills to re-design your island school.

They chose to locate the school near mainland Greece to take advantage of the climate end existing ferry routes.

FUTURE-PROOF: DESIGNING BUILDINGS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE – Team, Klima Angels

Task: Earth’s climate is changing. Around the world, lots of us are experiencing freak storms, floods and droughts.  Most buildings weren’t made to withstand such varied weather, which can be dangerous for the people living and working in them. Your challenge is to design a building for a chosen location, weather pattern or climate system.

The team chose to locate their building in the Philippines and make it able to withstand typhoons and tropical cyclones, providing shelter and facilities for the homeless, including medical rooms and food banks. The World ‘Klima’ in Filipino simply translates to ‘Climate’.

Each team produced a report, a poster and filmed a presentation and then met an assessment panel over Zoom, to answer questions about their projects.

We are incredibly proud of both teams who acquitted themselves brilliantly, answering questions with confidence. They gained a huge amount by taking part in the project and we are so delighted each team has been recognised with an award.

• Bronze Determination Award Winner: St Helen’s Team 2 Klima Angels
• Bronze Best Teamwork Award recognition: St Helen’s Team 1 Eco Cadet