Nelson and Colne College Sixth Form student Amelia Cockell has risen to the challenge to ‘Take Over’ a senior position at the Red Cross for a day!
On November 23rd, young people from across the UK were given the opportunity to take over key leadership roles within a variety of organisations; as part of the sixth annual Children’s Commissioner of England’s Takeover Day. As a student volunteer with the Red Cross, A Level student Amelia Cockell was able to take over the role of Alison Dixey, Operations Director for Area 2.3 (Lancashire, Manchester & Merseyside) at the Red Cross.
As part of the College’s extensive extra-curricular programme, students are able to sign up to various charity organisations as a volunteer. Amelia signed up with the Red Cross shortly after joining the College and has been an active participant ever since. As well as various activities such as a ‘flash mob’ event, she has been on an educational trip to Macedonia to take part in a Humanitarian Law training camp. When the opportunity came for Amelia to ‘take over’ a senior role at the Red Cross, she therefore jumped at the chance!
During her day, Amelia spent time looking at funding applications. Given a figure of £5000, she spent time looking into the various projects before deciding which projects were most worthy of the funding. She also spent time with some European Volunteer Students looking at the International Humanitarian Law resources and with members of the People and Learning team, giving suggestions on how they can encourage young people to volunteer for the British Red Cross.
Amelia said, “I was really excited to be given the opportunity to ‘take over’ the Operations Director role at the Red Cross! It was really interesting looking into the different funding applications, though I did find it difficult to decide which projects were most worthy of the funding available. I eventually decided to support a project which would see 1500 volunteers receive first aid training, and the training of 20 Peer Educators, whose role it is to deliver first aid training in their school or college. I chose this project as I felt it had the largest ‘reach’ and the potential to do the most good. The project is based in a deprived area of Liverpool and therefore I thought it was a very worthwhile cause!”
Alison Dixey, Operations Director at the Red Cross said, “Having Amelia ‘take over’ for the day was a great opportunity for me to listen to the ideas of one of our young volunteers and to share the choices and decisions we need to make on a daily basis with her.”
