A group of young leaders from Ferndown Upper School visited HMS Sultan recently with the Jon Egging Trust, in order to develop their leadership skills.
A total of 15 pupils spent a day on leadership tasks, including learning the basics of how to march and instruct parade training with the Establishment’s Ceremonial Staff and leadership and engineering activities within the Defence College of Technical Training’s Royal Naval Air Engineering and Survival Equipment School.
The Jon Egging Trust was established in memory of Flight Lieutenant Jon Egging, who lost his life whilst completing an air display with the Red Arrows at the Bournemouth Air Festival in 2011. The Trust provides teamwork, leadership, and work experience opportunities to young people.
The youngsters were all on the Trust’s Blue Skies 2 programme which runs over ten days across a six month period, and as well as visiting military establishments they will also do further STEM activities within industry.
Trust Youth Liaison Officer, Kaye Jackson accompanied the children throughout the visit and said: “The Blue Skies students in this group are selected by the schools and have become just a little disenchanted with education for a variety of reasons which are not their fault.
"The program brings them to places like HMS Sultan and HMS Victory which kind of opens their eyes to all the different jobs that are out there and we hope that they will be inspired to think “I can do that”, and that they go back to school with a little bit of renewed interest."
Max, 14, said: “Today’s been really good, I’ve enjoyed going inside all the helicopters and learning about how they work. I definitely feel more confident now about standing up and speaking to people.”
Lieutenant Barry “Tiny” Richardson said: “This morning they were on the drill square, getting used to taking control of other people and projecting their voices, which is very outside of their normal comfort zone and they’re far more involved now than when they arrived.
"They’ve all come out of their shells and are engaged really well and asking lots of intelligent questions about the aircraft.”
