Dudgeon Community Fund awards grants for Norfolk STEM education projects
The first round of 2024 grant awards by the Dudgeon Community Fund has resulted in four STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) education projects in Norfolk being provided with funding support.
Alderman Peel High School in Wells-next-the-Sea has a strong tradition of delivering innovative STEM learning, which includes an F24 Greenpower Kit Car after school club. The grant from the Dudgeon Community Fund will enable the school to re-purpose an existing outbuilding to store the kit cars and become a safe working space for both teams. The purchase of a further Greenpower kit car will also enable the school and the STEM club students to share its STEM activities with local primary school children.
Sheringham Museum runs sessions for schools, focusing on KS1 and KS2, which explore topics across the curriculum including STEM, language and history. The grant from the Dudgeon Community Fund will be used to design and construct a dedicated space within the museum for the delivery of these sessions.
Hethersett Academy is working with STEM Learning to hold a Design and Technology Conference at the University of East Anglia on 12 July 2024. The event is designed to help teachers consider how best to implement STEM into their curriculum. It will be open to school teachers and technicians from across the country, with attendance being free to those from Norfolk and Suffolk schools. The grant will help fund teacher speaker costs and contribute to the production of an on-line and printed Conference Brochure.
The Ogden Trust is a charitable trust that exists to promote the teaching and learning of physics, and each year it runs a Coastal Energy Internship Programme. During 2024, the grant will support eight student participants, and whilst two of them will undertake their internship at the Equinor O&M Hub in Norfolk, the Ogden Trust will work with the company’s wider supply chain to provide the other six internship places.
The Dudgeon Community Fund receives a donation of at least £125,000 per annum from the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm, which is operated by Equinor.
Commenting on these grant awards, Dudgeon Plant Manager Chris Hosea said:
“These are four very different projects, each of which will support STEM learning in Norfolk. Since the Dudgeon Community Fund launched its STEM Programme in 2018, over 12,500 young people have benefitted from its grant awards, and I hope the Fund will receive applications from many more projects over the coming months.”
Grant applications from schools and colleges in Great Yarmouth, North Norfolk and Breckland regions of Norfolk can be submitted to the Fund at any time, with funding awards being made four times a year.
The Dudgeon Community Fund is administered by the Norfolk Community Foundation (www. norfolkfoundation.com )
About Equinor in Norfolk
Equinor is a long-term partner for Norfolk and has been an active member of the community for over a decade through the Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon wind farms it operates off the Norfolk coast.
The Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm is owned by Equinor, Masdar and China Resources, whilst Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm is owned by Equinor, Equitix Offshore 5 (co-owned by Equitix and the Renewable Investment Group TRIG) and a fund managed by Macquarie Asset Management.
On behalf of its partners, Equinor is also maturing the proposed Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon extension projects (SEP and DEP).
SEP and DEP will double the capacity of the existing Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon wind farms, providing renewable energy to power an
additional 785,000 UK homes and making an important contribution to the UK’s decarbonisation goals.
Currently, the combined output of Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon wind farms is sufficient to power around 710,000 UK homes, and
the proposed extensions will increase that to nearly 1.5 million UK households.
Both wind farms have established community funds which in total have awarded over £1 million to projects in Norfolk. The funds were set up to provide grants to Norfolk community groups, including schools and charities, seeking financial assistance for projects or initiatives that meet key criteria and focus on renewable energy, marine environment and safety, sustainability, or education in these areas. During 2020, the funds provided grant funding to the Norfolk Community Foundation’s COVID-19 funding initiatives, and during 2021 grant funding has been made available to support Norfolk’s ‘every child on-line’ initiative.
Issue date: 25-03-24
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