Students from the Matthew Arnold School, St Gregory the Great Catholic School and The Oxford Academy came along to our Oxford Distribution Centre and spent the morning learning about the world of logistics; working with our apprentices to solve logistics based puzzles and seeing first hand how a global logistics operation functions. After lunch The Oxford Academy hosted an afternoon of activities where the students learned about healthy balanced lifestyles. Half of the afternoon focused on healthy eating, with students breaking into teams led by an OUFC player and creating their own signature pasta-based or flapjack dish. The other half of the afternoon saw students receiving some top class football coaching from OUFC.
Players from Oxford United included Josh Ruffles, Max Crocombe, Johnny Mullins and Matt Bevans. Josh led one winning team in a cookery competition to make the healthiest, tastiest dish and came up with an inspired recipe of pasta with mushrooms, chicken and cheese. One Matthew Arnold student, James Lambert (14) commented ” we took a fairly relaxed style to cooking, a bit like Jamie Oliver!…it’s been really good fun working with Josh, he knows what he is doing and we got a chance to chat about how he got into football while we were cooking ”
Thérèse Griffin from Matthew Arnold School said “One of the core priorities for Matthew Arnold School, from both staff and students perspective, is to create bigger links with the wider community. As Unipart has both local and global interests, we are very excited about being part of the programme. The students are very much looking forward to the opportunity to see what the world of logistics is all about, and to question apprentices about their careers and the routes into the work that they have taken”
This was echoed by Jessica Vaisey from The Oxford Academy, who said “We have a hugely enthusiastic and talented group of people here, who have the potential to bring skills and ideas into the local Oxfordshire community that we haven’t even dreamt of yet. Today is a great opportunity for them to understand and experience the challenges and complexities of a major global organisation”