Following on from the visit to the Motor Vehicle and Engineering area, the Mayor toured the College’s Green Skills Retrofit Hub to shadow our WMCA award winning insulation bootcamp provision delivered in partnership with Westdale Midlands utilising funding from the WMCA. Our latest cohort of adult learners, many of whom have joined the training programme as previously unemployed were using Virtual Reality headsets to visualise retrofitting houses which the Mayor had a go at.
Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, said: “Helping local people gain the skills to secure well-paid jobs and transform their lives is at the heart of what I’m working to achieve.
“Industries like engineering, green technology, and retrofit are growing rapidly in the West Midlands, and the skills bootcamps and training providers in our region are crucial in equipping people to thrive in these sectors.”
Employers and stakeholders who support the bootcamp, including housing association, Citizen, whom our adult learners have since gone on to help retrofit over 1000 homes across Coventry, reinforced their support for the bootcamp programme expressing:
Adam Denny, Asset Planning Manager at Citizen, said: “As a member of the College’s Skills of the Future Panel, it was brilliant to attend the Green Skills Retrofit Hub at Coventry College during the visit from Mayor, Richard Parker.“We’re proud of our partnership with Westdale and Coventry College to help train the next generation of retrofitters. The students get to work on retrofitting our homes after they have completed the bootcamp at the College which is a great opportunity for them to learn new skills on the job. At Citizen we are committed to working with our partners to make a positive difference to our customers and communities.”
