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As part of their ‘Accelerate 25’ programme, Mercedes have partnered with British social enterprise the Stemettes to try to inspire more girls and young women into pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) careers.
With women comprising only 24% of the UK’s core STEM workforce, the Stemettes – an award-winning UK social enterprise led by Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE – have worked with more than 50,000 young people aged five to 25 across the British Isles since 2013. And now the reigning champions Mercedes are on board, as they ve marked International Women’s Day 2021 by unveiling details of a partnership with the scheme.
In March, the ‘Student to Stemette’ programme will see young women from ethnic minority and low socio-economic backgrounds match with experienced Mercedes Formula 1 engineers for a four-month mentoring programme to guide them towards a STEM career.
As part of the Mercedes Formula 1 team’s efforts to improve diversity and inclusion, they have launched a five-year programme called ‘Accelerate 25’, which aims for 25% of new starters in their team to come from under-represented groups until the end of 2025.
The team, which launched a black livery for 2020 to mark a greater focus on diversity, have already begun steps in their Accelerate 25 programme with unconscious bias training for 200 recruiters within Mercedes, and diversity and inclusion training for 150 managers, with every employee to have taken the diversity training by June 2021.
The seven-time F1 constructors champions are also working with the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK) to support engineers from BAME backgrounds, and have already begun working with the Mulberry STEM Academy to inspire more engineers from BAME backgrounds.