Funding confirmed for quarry leadership training
Published by Inside Resources, reprinted here with permission
The Institute of Quarrying has secured $100,000 to help develop training for leaders in the industry.
The courses - in emotional intelligence leadership, adaptive leadership, foresight and strategic thinking leadership, leadership in ethics and inclusive practice leadership - are ready for development and will be funded by a grant from the Inspiring Futures Foundation.
Those subjects had been identified as part of IoQ's Fit for Future quarrying research project, education officer Paul Sutton told delegates at the QuarryNZ conference last week.
The IoQ's funding application was well received by the foundation, which was happy to support it, trustee Mark Pizey told delegates. He said the trust would love to see the initiatives under development being spread further.
"The joy to us is that the nature of the courses that have been proposed are generic, and so whilst they'll certainly apply across the quarrying, mining and tunnelling sectors, they equally cover other sectors, such as the motor trades, who also need management skills."
Inspiring Futures
The Inspiring Futures Foundation was established in 2022 to provide financial support for people working in, or studying to work in, the automotive, transport and logistics, drilling, mining and quarrying, and gas industries.
The foundation's industry partners include the Minerals Council, the Institute of Quarrying NZ, the Aggregate and Quarry Association, MinEx and AusIMM's NZ branch.
Pizey says the foundation manages quite a sizeable "chunk of cash" - about $25 million. "I encourage anyone in the room who is thinking of developing a training programme or has trainees who could do with some scholarship funding to make an approach to the trust for that purpose."
For most students in Aotearoa, the experience of designing and welding together an electric kart’s chassis is something entirely new, and so is the idea of a career in engineering.
This is where a free, nationwide programme from EVolocity connects the dots, and the Inspiring Futures Foundation (IFF) is proud to be backing them as a Premier Sponsor.
EVolocity's core programme gives Year 7–13 students the creative freedom to design, engineer, and build their own electric karts or bikes, using an electric motor kit as their starting point. Along the way, these students pick up skills including project management, teamwork, CAD design, and welding.
The programme runs across Auckland, Bay of Plenty/Rotorua, Waikato, Taranaki, Manawatū, Wellington, Nelson, and Canterbury/Otago, with teams working alongside teachers and mentors before competing at Regional Finals.
Jo Morgan, Head of Partnerships at EVolocity Charitable Trust, said the IFF’s belief and advocacy will be genuinely transformative in answering the call-to-action for more engineers and youth with engineering skills.
“We’re doing everything we can to inspire rangatahi into engineering and innovation, however, securing sustainable funding is always a challenge. IFF stepped in at exactly the right moment.
“A multi‑year commitment of this scale gives us the stability and runway we need to grow our impact as a charity.”
IFF Convenor Louise Sixton, says that, for IFF, partnerships like this go far beyond funding, especially when considering a national shortage of engineers.
“EVolocity represent mentorship, the opportunity for young people to try something new, and a doorway towards potential STEM careers. It’s exciting that, together, IFF and EVolocity are bridging the gap between the classroom and industry.”
CEO of and co-founder of Heartlab, Will Hewitt (25) competed in EVolocity at just 15 years old while at Nelson College. Three years later, he co-founded HeartLab, a cloud-native cardiac imaging platform that uses AI to support cardiologists across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. At the time, he credited EVolocity for giving him an engineer's mindset and the critical thinking skills he uses every day.
Jackson Crawford, formerly of Mahurangi College, took a similar path. He went from building his first electric vehicle as an EVolocity student to becoming an Avionics Team Lead at Dawn Aerospace. Jackson is now working on a next-generation spaceplane designed to operate in micro-gravity environments. He has said that EVolocity gave him hands-on exposure to real-world skills and a head start over many of his peers at university.
With no government funding, Morgan says EVolocity relies entirely on the financial support of corporate sponsors and funding partners to deliver the programme.
“This grant has lifted a significant weight off our shoulders, and we are deeply grateful for IFF’s support.”
Visit the Inspiring Futures Foundation website for more information on the grants available: www.inspiringfutures.nz
Jemma Cheer