Selby College’s Post

Transcript

Drax has had a real focus on community and on building local prosperity and growth. As a result of this, there's been a key focus on skills and talent and really engaging with the next generation. That means building relationships with students of all ages and really driving the ambition and the aspirations of our local next generation. There's going to be 500,000 green energy jobs created within the next 10 years and Drax will obviously play a huge part and be at the forefront of a lot of those roles. The educational side of things is probably from the center of everything that we do here. We work with schools from primary all the way up to to universities. We provide funding for engineering apprenticeship and we also provide funding for projects which deliver educational programmes directly to young people round STEM or green skills. Subway College is at the heart of the community or a general further education college. We're really committed to the whole STEM agenda. I think as a college, we're really fortunate to be in such close proximity to Drax and they've played a key part really in supporting us. Is tremendously important to us here at Drax Power Station because we've been running for 50 years, we want to run for another potentially 50 years and the people are going to do that are the school children of today. STEM education is so important to enable careers in chemistry and engineering at sites like Drax. I did the traditional air levels of biology, chemistry and maths and had a affinity towards the chemistry, so they diverse level of knowledge that I have now. Compared to 17 years ago when I started is is huge. I've always lived locally to draft, so it's been really interesting to see how the plants developed from living locally to working here and then the changes that have been undertaken in the time that I've been here sort of with the promise of Becks hopefully in the future as well. I remember Jack's coming into schools and colleges and, and it's had a part to play there. A lot of people in the community are either employed directly through tracks or work on the site or employed for some of the supply chain and and support network that goes around it. So yes, it makes a huge impact to the community around us. My family moved to Yorkshire in the early 1980s, so I was lucky enough to be able to watch the north cooling towers as they were constructed. My dad also worked in the industry, so he was at Strax and I used to come with him occasionally, though I already had that interaction before. I looked at Drax as an employer. When I was ready to reenter the workforce after having my second child, the job came up in my department. It was ideal. I'd worked in the energy industry myself, so I had a good understanding. I also work with children and the hours fitted around my family life. We have a team that delivers projects that use Lego to help develop programming skills. We'd interact with career sessions. We also have a partnership with Selby College, which looks at skilling, reskilling and green skills. So BE College has got a reputation now of being at the cutting edge in terms of some of those courses that we run, particularly around carbon capture. And you know, we've been the first College in the country to develop those programmes and that is down to tracks and their commitment. We work closely with Drax and they're really enabling us to accelerate those developments, raise awareness, but more importantly to create the workforce for the future. Drax Power Station it's operations supports over 6 1/2 thousand jobs in the Humber and Yorkshire region. That's over ��350 million of added value and one of the biggest businesses in our area of North Yorkshire. And I think the region is rightly proud that not only do we have a really important asset that helps power the UK, but it will have an asset that can help fight climate change in the long term, helping to sustain the critical employment that we have today long into the future.