The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Kids designs brought to life
In celebration of ‘This is Engineering Day’ Amazon asked an artist to bring to life some of the futuristic delivery methods invented by children who attended STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) camps at the company’s Peterborough fulfilment centre. The UK is facing a significant skills and diversity shortfall in engineering and technology - the latest figures estimate a shortfall of 59,000 engineers every year, and only 12 per cent of professional engineers in the UK are female.
This is Engineering Day, created by the Royal Academy
of Engineering, took place during Tomorrow’s Engineers Week from November 4-8, to change the misrepresentation of engineering online, celebrate the contribution of engineers, and encourage more young people to consider a career in the profession.
The Peterborough children’s innovative designs feature a ‘Paradrop’ helicopter system by Lyla Hendry (9), a ‘Smileboard’ skateboard from Krish Desai (6) and ‘Ben’ the flying delivery robot designed by Daniel Marks (6).
The pupils were welcomed to the fulfilment centre by Victor Pulido, site leader at Amazon in Peterborough. He said: “It was great to have the local children come and take part in our tour activities. I hope that we have inspired the children to think about a future in engineering, hopefully with Amazon.
“The designs were so creative, and we now have them on display in our fulfilment centre for all our visitors to see. Thank you to Lyla, Daniel and Krish for taking part.”
Schools and families wishing to book a free robotics workshop at their nearest Amazon fulfilment centre, or to find out how Amazon Future Engineer is supporting teacher training, apprenticeships and bursaries, can do so by visiting: www.amazonfuturengineer.co.uk.
Amazon fulfilment centre tours are available to book free of charge at http:// uk.amazonfctours.com/