For the second year running, adi Group will be joining members of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) and will be posting photos of Lottie Dolls at work during Tomorrow’s Engineers Week (November 2019) to show the huge range of careers available in engineering.
During the week, photos will be posted on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram with the hashtag #WESLottieTour. This year WES is encouraging volunteers to produce video content, as YouTube is very popular amongst primary age students.
The aim of the project is to present images of what a career in engineering might look like by use of a Lottie Doll, to help capture the imagination of young girls and boys. The plan is for parents, grandparents and other family members and friends to share the online photos with the young people in their lives who may not have access to social media, so that this sparks an interest in engineering.
Lottie Tour has grown massively in the past few years, starting with only ten volunteers in its first year, to over 150 in 2018. And we’re hoping this number will continue to grow for 2019, as WES celebrates its centenary.
This year the theme is ‘Then and Now’ to celebrate how far engineering has come in the past 100 years. Volunteers are being asked to have a look back in their company’s archives for any old photos showing how things used to be done to compare to modern day.
The project is being organised by WES Young Members’ Board (YMB) members, Kate Mactear and Jo Douglas-Harris.
Kate said: “We’re aiming to make the Lottie Tour bigger and better this year! We’ve already had a great response from WES volunteers and planning is well underway. We’re also working on creating a poster with Lottie to celebrate the WES centenary. This will feature 5 or 6 engineers alongside their Lottie doll showing what jobs they do. This will be for schools and STEM clubs to use as a resource with primary aged children. We think this will be a great way to show young girls and boys that an engineer isn’t just the person who fixes your car or the builders on a building site, it’s so much more!”
Last year, Lottie Dolls produced bespoke PPE for WES including hard hats, high vis jackets, safety glasses and lab coats, so Lottie is ready to go on to site or into a lab. This will be used once again as it proved very popular with volunteers.
Volunteers are also being asked to create a slide, featuring a few pictures and a short summary of their job and hobbies outside of work. These will be collected and uploaded on the WES website for volunteers to use as a resource for outreach activities in schools. We hope to create a library of many different types of engineering jobs to show children how far you can go with a career in engineering!
“The evolution and growth of #WESLottieTour is due to the commitment and dedication of the team at the WES YMB. The campaign visualises careers in such a fun and engaging way. Each year, we are amazed by the breadth of careers out there in STEM fields. With the Centenary celebrations too, we are hugely excited about what this year’s #TEWeek19 will bring,” says Ian Harkin, CEO of Lottie Dolls.
If you would like to register your interest to be involved in the Lottie tour this year, please contact the YMB at [email protected]. If you would like to follow Lottie’s Tour this year, all of the images from the week can be viewed by searching #WESLottieTour on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, or following @YMB1919 and @Lottie_dolls on Twitter.