Student Charlotte Hollingworth has recently been awarded the ‘Young Volunteer of the Year’ award for her contributions to Barnsley Council.

Charlotte, 17 from Barnsley, has been volunteering for the Dodworth Ward Alliance for the past 18 months. Her role involves the organisation of various events to promote the village and sitting on the panel made up of residents from the area, counsellors and business owners who meet for monthly meetings.

Marcia Cunningham, Community Development Officer for the Council, said:

“One of our priorities as a ward is to run events aimed at local young people. Charlotte is the youngest member of the alliance and it has been really useful to have her on board”.

One of the biggest projects, and Charlotte’s favourite, has been the organisation of the Dodworth Christmas Fair. For Charlotte, this involved organising street stalls, entertainment, the Santa’s grotto and more. The event was extremely well attended and Charlotte even helped out as a steward to ensure the safety of the public.

Charlotte’s volunteering endeavours don’t end there, as she also volunteers at her local Scouts group twice a week as a young leader.

Principal of Greenhead College, Simon Lett commented:

“It’s fantastic that Charlotte has won this award. For Charlotte to devote so much time to volunteering whilst working hard towards her A Levels is astounding. We really encourage our students to make their difference in the community through the ‘Greenhead Volunteering Scheme’. It’s a fantastic way for students to increase their employability skills and future prospects’.

Two teams of four Greenhead students took part in this year’s Engineering Education Scheme. The scheme, run by the Engineering Development Trust, is a national programme which enables sixth form students to work alongside professional engineers to tackle a real-world problem facing the engineer’s company.

This year’s projects were in collaboration with BorgWarner Turbosystems and hydraulic access platform manufacturer Niftylift. Students have spent the past 6 months working with their linked organisation solving various different engineering challenges. They also attended a workshop residential where there were facilities available to the students to manufacture their own prototypes and models.

The scheme concluded with a celebration and assessment day at Sheffield Hallam University where students from 12 different colleges had to produce a full technical and business report as well as a prototype to demonstrate their ideas.

Both teams’ projects were well-received by the judges and both sponsoring companies will looking to implement the students’ solutions.

The BorgWarner team won the People’s Choice Award voted for by the participants at the regional presentation and all members of each team graduated at Gold Level.

Mick Callaghan, Physics Teacher and Engineering Education Scheme Co-ordinator commented:

The scheme is a fantastic enrichment opportunity for those students interested in an engineering career. The students’ ability to tackle real-world engineering problems and provide such valuable solutions that both organisations are now looking to implement them has been astonishing. I am extremely proud of them all.