Training provider JTL is placing significant investment into its Ambassadors Initiative for the second year, proving that there is room in the electrical and heating and plumbing sectors for women.

The Ambassadors Initiative brings together bright young women from across industry to take responsibility for sharing information about apprenticeships for young women in the building services engineering sector.

JTL has once again recruited a number of young women from among its ranks, currently in apprenticeships or having just completed them, who are confident, intelligent and dedicated to spreading the word that women can make great electricians, plumbers and heating installers.

The new ambassadors are: Chantelle Browne from Thetford in Norfolk; Charlene-Ann Jennings from Stoke-on-Trent; Alice Duarte from Chelmsford; Katie Baldwin from Nuneaton; Meleisha Stuart from Huddersfield; Samantha Jones from Coleford in Gloucestershire; Lucy Suggett from Chard in Somerset; Hedy Navarro from Huddersfield; Lisa Marie Wood from Manchester; Adele Claire Walsh from Wigan; Rebecca Ashcroft from Burton-on-Trent; and Phoebe Stockford from Oxford. They are all volunteers who have agreed to carry out this role to try and attract more young women to trade apprenticeships.

The JTL programme was a great hit last year with the ambassadors appearing at events around the country and undertaking local and regional interviews with the media. They shared the message that not only can women be excellent tradespeople, but many already are, and offer something vital for professions that are still predominantly male orientated.

Launched in 2013 at the House of Commons, the aim of the JTL Ambassador programme is to encourage greater understanding among young women of the career opportunities that are available in building services engineering.

Whether pursuing an interest in electrical, plumbing, heating or ventilating, women leaving school or college are being asked to consider the apprenticeship opportunities that exist and to see these occupations as not solely being the territory of men.

Among the first grouping of Ambassadors were women who have made major successes of careers in the sector. These include extending the work of their employer into new areas, as well as those who have gone beyond their apprenticeship to take on significant roles in support of national and local infrastructure projects or in creating a business of their own.

A plumbing apprenticeship at Level 2 can be tackled within two years, with the option of continuing forward to achieve Level 3 after a further two years, so many well-respected and suitably rewarded people in the industry started their careers as apprentices and have maintained this progression route for new staff.

At the heart of JTL Ambassadors is the belief that young women who are making a significant success of their careers in the sector should share their own personal experiences as an apprentice, including the benefits they gained and their ambitions for the future.

“There are a number of well-documented case studies of women setting up their own companies in these traditionally male-dominated sectors and making a serious success of their business,” says JTL’s Yasmin Damree-Ralph.

“Many women live on their own and feel much more confident inviting a female tradesperson into their home rather than having men around the place. And women have a number of benefits to offer the public in these roles. It’s vital that young women who have a practical bent are given the opportunity to make the decisions that are right for them and that they are not steered into the wrong options because of their gender and what older people accept as the norm. Beauty and hairdressing have their place, but girls are finding that there are worthwhile professions outside those normally touted as ‘right for girls’.

“As with their male counterparts, further education is not always the right option or attractive to young people – the chance to earn while they learn in an apprenticeship is far more attractive to lots of young people than ‘racking up’ a student loan of perhaps £30,000 after gaining a degree they may never actually use in their working lives. Young people are becoming so much more aware these days and give their futures a lot more thought than perhaps those of us who are a bit older did when we were at school.”

For more information, visit www.jtltraining.com.