West Midlands Trains has recently formed a new partnership with Cherished, a non-profit organisation providing attachment focused support for girls in primary schools and secondary schools across Birmingham.
At West Midlands Railway we assist Cherished in running their ground-breaking self-esteem workshops that are committed to nurturing, empowering and developing true potential for young girls.
As an industry that is perceived to be dominated by male employees, we want to promote the fact that we are an organisation who is onboard with recruiting and retaining women in the industry.
Rail Week, which took place recently aimed to inspire a generation of young people and encourage them to consider careers in the Rail industry. For this reason, Senior Conductor Manager, Tawhida Yaacoub, attended West Midland Railway’s first mentoring workshop with primary school girls in the Midlands.
Hannah Borg, Founder of Cherished commented, “Tawhida wowed the girls with a great session exploring her journey through a male dominated industry. She inspired the girls with fun activities, fab goodies and an amazing overall message that girls are awesome and are capable of incredible things. Thank you to West Midlands Railway and Tawhida for inspiring us.”
On top of the mentoring workshops, we have also sponsored the 2020 Cherished calendar which will be full of empowering quotes from famous women. We now aim to send more of our female colleagues to future workshops to inspire the next generation.
Jane Fisher, Transition and Projects Director Champion of “Women in Rail” and Chair of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Steering Group added, “It is great news that we have set up an alliance with Cherished. Supporting these girls, who often come from vulnerable backgrounds is so important to our EDI strategy and gives us another opportunity as a business to do the right thing. It also allows the business to showcase some of the female talent we have amongst our ranks and share the strength that they have to inspire the next generation of railway staff”.
If you are looking for inspiration on careers or current vacancies with West Midlands Railway, visit our careers section in the ‘About Us’.