Over 1,500 local school children have had the opportunity to develop essential life skills at this year’s Shrewsbury and Oswestry Crucial Crew event held at the Nesscliff Army Training Camp in Shropshire.
Every June Landmarc Support Services (Landmarc) and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) host the two-week event, designed to provide 10-year old students with those all-essential life skills. The event is intended to be informative and fun, where children learn through active involvement.
The Crucial Crew scheme aims to put children through a range of scenarios that teach them good citizenship, danger avoidance and incident management. This year’s event focused on subjects such as electrical safety, water safety, farm safety and road safety, and also covered behavioural expectations regarding vandalism and theft.
Due to the large scale of this year’s event, the event organisers needed over 100 volunteers to work as chaperones and to assist with the various scenarios and exercises. Some of the volunteers attended their first Crucial Crew event as children and are proud to still have their Crucial Crew printed t-shirts today!
The new Mayor of Shrewsbury, Peter Nutting, who attended the event said: “It is heart-warming to know that children are being taught essential lifesaving skills, giving them the very best start in life. The skills learnt at the Crucial Crew event will be invaluable to the students for years to come.”
DIO’s Training Safety Officer at Nesscliff, Major Richard Slaney, added: “As always, it was a pleasure to host the Crucial Crew team again this year and an honour to be part of an event that teaches children vital life skills. It’s a great investment into the future of our young people in the area.”
Sarah Butler, Team Manager at Landmarc commented: “It’s always great to be involved with this event, which provides valuable life skills for the local children and helps to inspire and guide our next generation. We’ve been supporting this event since 2003, when Landmarc first started working with DIO to manage the military training estate.
“It’s a real team effort, with Landmarc, ESS and DIO’s Richard Slaney working collaboratively to ensure the event is a success. Seeing the children arrive each year and get so much out of it makes all the hard work worthwhile – thank you to you all.”
Over the 23 years it has been running, the Crucial Crew event has hosted more than 27,000 children, many of which have reported putting their new-found skills into practice in their daily lives.
The management committee of Crucial Crew is comprised of representatives from the local police, education, health and military, in addition to the communities of both Shrewsbury and Oswestry.