Community Windpower help neighbouring high school

Community Windpower has once again been working closely with neighbour Helsby High School to help the Year 12 students with their work experience week.

With COVID-19 variant Omicron sweeping the nation, sixth form students at Helsby High School were unable to complete their work experience in person this year.

As this is such an important opportunity for students to have an insight in to the workplace, Community Windpower, and several other businesses local to the school, stepped in to provide a week’s long remote work experience project for the students.

Community Windpower staff provided a presentation to explain the project, along with resources to the school to conduct a “site searching” task which incorporated many important, transferable skills such as research, report writing, teamwork and presenting.

This also involved two Community Windpower staff presenting their own career paths which allowed the students to have an insight into different paths and approaches into the renewable energy sector.

At the end of the week, the two groups of students presented their ‘ideal’ wind farm site to our staff members. Both teams presented confidently and showed that they had thoroughly understood the key considerations when developing a wind farm.

After the project was complete, one of the students who took part in the project said: “The Community Windpower work experience opened my eyes to the career paths that I hadn’t previously considered.

“I enjoyed learning about windfarms and applying my geography knowledge, but most of all working with people that I don't usually work with and presenting our best windfarm location.

“The Community Windpower work experience project allowed me to understand the challenges of a real project such as setting up a windfarm and team working in a professional environment.”

Diane Wood, community benefits director at Community Windpower, said: “We didn’t hesitate when we heard that the sixth form students needed a work-based learning task, as we believe it is important to help the local community, especially during the pandemic.

“The project was really important, not only to raise the importance of renewable energy and climate change, but also it included several transferable skills which can be used in any workplace going forward.

“I want to wish all the students the best of luck going forward with their career paths and we will always welcome the opportunity to work with Helsby High School in the future.”

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