RNLI Women In Engineering Day at RNLI College Poole

Mrs Robinson our IT Technician took 7 Year 7 girls to this event for the first time.  The RNLI have been running their Women In Engineering Day for the last 5 years, this year we, along with a number of upper schools were lucky enough to be invited.  The event is coordinated and run by women working in design and engineering roles within the RNLI, and the idea of the day is to open the eyes of young women to the possibility of careers in these areas.

The 7 girls (Hala, Amy, Daisy, Kayleigh, Lily-Rose, Holly and Tia) had been meeting as a group all year to work on their team building skills, as the event involved a number of challenges. During the year they raised money to design special T shirts to wear to the event, these were much appreciated by the organizers.  The girls researched, manufactured and marketed and sold nautical rope bracelets to raise the money required. 

Ironically one of the event challenges was to make rope brackets in the lifeboat colours, of course they excelled at this task. Other challenges included  understanding  the best choice of materials for different purposes, did you know the best way to explain composite materials and not composite material is by using biscuits!  The bridge the girls had to make to withstand the force of a marble dropped on it was a combination of a Hobnob and two Bourbon biscuits.

Congratulations to Amy whose amazing dexterity ensured she was the fastest girl there to assemble a fidget cube printed on a 3D printer.  The girls finished the day with a personal tour of the  inshore lifeboats on Poole quay by two crew members.

Quote from Hala

"Our second activity at the RNLI was making bracelets. They were super easy to make, looked cool and could be a lifesaver! You can unravel the bracelet to get 2m of rope!"