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Cornwall Marine Academy wins  Maritime UK Future Skills Award
Cornwall Marine Academy wins Maritime UK Future Skills Award
The first national Maritime UK Awards ceremony took place on September 19 in Southampton, recognising maritime leaders and the industry’s £46.1bn contribution to the economy. 
Paul Wickes MBE CEO, Aurelie Nollet CMA Director and Dave Wickes CMA Team Leader with Shipping Minister Nusrat Ghani MP

The first national Maritime UK Awards ceremony took place on September 19 in Southampton, recognising maritime leaders and the industry’s £46.1bn contribution to the economy.  The first of their kind, the awards aim to celebrate businesses and organisations across the sector, from leisure, shipping, professional services to ports, engineering and manufacturing.   Sponsored by Nautilus International, Cornwall Marine Academy were delighted to be given the Future Skills Award.

“This award is an amazing recognition of the work of two special groups of people: the experienced and talented Academy team based at CMN who support young people into the marine sector and our 95 marine businesses who provide volunteer ambassadors who give up their time to share their experiences of marine jobs and love for the marine sector. With their incredible support, we have delivered marine career advice to secondary schools in Cornwall since 2008,” said Aurelie Nollet, Director of Cornwall Marine Academy (CMA).

The Future Skills Award recognises those that have made a tangible contribution to meeting the future skills needs of the sector. The winner was required to evidence pioneering activity across education, training or apprenticeship development, to help match available skills to the emerging and future requirements of the industry.   Paul Wickes MBE CEO, Aurelie Nollet CMA Director and Dave Wickes CMA Team Leader represented the team from the Cornwall Marine Academy and Shipping Minister Nusrat Ghani MP presented their award.

Cornwall Marine Network created Cornwall Marine Academy to find solutions to problems reported by local marine employers when trying to employ young people for their future workforce. Employers identified insufficient employability skills, young people lacking awareness of career opportunities in the marine sector, a lack of any meaningful work experience and a poor work ethic. In response, Cornwall Marine Academy challenged and supported marine employers to engage in providing solutions to the issue of preparing young people for their future marine careers.

Since 2008, the CMA has delivered careers advice to more than 35,000 young people across Cornwall. CMA has gained an excellent track-record of delivering industry-led programmes; including careers advice, taster sessions, work placements at marine businesses’ premises, industry recognised vocational qualifications, 1:1 mentoring and group-work and training embedded into the school curriculum.

CMA deploys a team of 95 voluntary Marine Ambassadors all from local businesses into Secondary Schools across Cornwall, offering careers advice and explaining what employers need from Young People.  Key projects include:

  • My School Is an Island: funded by Seafarers UK and EDT, an environmentally themed 7-week STEM project for students 12 to 14 years: the very first programme of its type in Cornwall.
  • Skills Support for Young People project: a unique approach to delivering vocational training all year round at schools, to give 84 students industry-recognised pre-Apprenticeship engineering qualifications.
  • Atlantic Youth: 3-year project to provide overseas experiences to Year 7 to Year 10 pupils in marine activities in France, Portugal, Spain and Ireland which increase awareness of the marine environment as a resource to protect and enjoy as a career path.
  • Game Changer: Big Lottery funded project, CMA engaged with 220 Young People through the delivery of taster sessions with the support of Marine Ambassadors across different areas of business.
  • Between 2018 and 2019, the CMA team will have reached out to more than 3,000 young people aged 15-25 via the Futureworks Project at two large career fairs in the South West.

 “Winning the inaugural Maritime UK Future Skills Award brings immense pride that we have showcased the best of Cornwall on the national stage and gained recognition for the dedicated hard work of our Academy team and the Ambassadors from our local marine business sector. Together they have shared careers advice with more than 35,000 young people during the last 11 years, meaning on average, every working day the Academy team has existed we provide marine careers advice to 15 local young people on the opportunities in our growing sector,” concludes Paul Wickes MBE, Cornwall Marine Network’s Chief Executive Officer.

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