Pennant Walters made a significant sponsorship contribution to The Greenpower Education Trust (on behalf of their wind farm projects in adjoining South Wales locations).

The funds made possible the “Greenpower Goblin” events, a specific race series for 9-11year old children.  The children have to assemble a single seater electric car from a box of parts, design the bodywork of the car and then learn how to drive it.  After a bit of practise, they are ready to take part in a race event against other schools.  At the end of the school year, the car is dismantled ready to be rebuilt by the next set of children. The whole project is designed to encourage young children to become involved and engaged with sustainable engineering and technology.

Almost 200 primary age children from 10 local schools took part in the challenge, which is extremely flexible in the way it”s applied to the school environment. From lunch time clubs to embedding in the curriculum (as a classroom project), as a way of re-engaging children who are educationally hard to reach or as enrichment activities for the whole year group.

At Greenpower events, prizes are not only awarded for the fastest cars in the drag and slalom races, teams also won prizes for all aspects of the project – from the design of their body work, the materials they construct their bodywork from, their team uniform and any written work the team supplies. One team even wrote their own song all about their Goblin team!

The Greenpower Education Trust has a unique approach and believes that young people are most inspired to follow a science and engineering career, by taking part in an exciting, ongoing, hands-on challenge with real relevance in everyday life – designing and building a single seater electric car then racing it against other teams.

Greenpower believes that the ongoing nature of the design/build/race format of the project makes it particularly effective at embedding STEM skills and habits of mind, as well as key transferable skills such as team work and collaboration, communication, problem-solving, and self-confidence.

The charity has been running for 15 years and has a proven track record in converting interest to participation to careers. Pennant Walters are delighted to have been involved in developing to engineers and designers of tomorrow, helping children into engineering is crucial for ALL our futures.