A little doll from Donegal has donned her hard hat and high-vis gear for an exciting week of work this week.
The Lottie Tour is well underway this Engineers Week as 150 volunteers bring Lottie Dolls to their labs, offices and work sites to show the world what a little girl can do in STEM careers.
#lottietour
Lottie is a doll created by Letterkenny-based company Arklu. She is a real-life child inspired doll with an ambition to disrupt gender stereotyping in the toy aisles.
For the third year running, members of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) have brought Lottie dolls to work and shared photos on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #LottieTour.
Lottie has been seen test driving Aston Martins, inspecting construction sites, investigating fires and researching the human brain.
I would like to introduce our newest engineer, Lottie. Lottie will be joining the @astonmartin team in support of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 5 – 9 Nov, showcasing the huge range of careers available in engineering at Aston Martin. #LottieTour pic.twitter.com/w5w4K7ZPKK
— Grace Barnie (@gracebarnie) November 5, 2018
The aim of the project is to present images of what a career in engineering might look like by use of a Lottie Doll, to help capture the imagination of young girls and boys.
Over 150 engineers, female and male from all over the world, have been involved in taking photos using Lottie Dolls borrowed from WES, coordinated by the WES Young Members’ Board.
Our week starts on the microscopes, looking at fracture surfaces of some test pieces we've just received back. Materials uses test programs to investigate fundamental properties or understand key processing parameters and the effect these can have ? #TEWeek18 #LottieTour #RRstem pic.twitter.com/4GY3Sb3lfg
— Deborah Harris (@DeborahHarris_) November 6, 2018
Lottie Dolls donated an additional 50 Lotties to the Top 50 Women in Engineering 2018 winners so they could participate too.
Lottie has also visited schools in Ireland and the UK to highlight the variety and excitement of a career in engineering to school age girls.
Lottie’s tour wouldn’t have been complete without a trip to our favourite bridge. A huge thank you to everyone at the Suspension Bridge who made Lottie welcome, she even got to see the vaults underneath the bridge #lottieuwe #LottieTour #engineeringatuwe #brunelsbridge #teweek18 pic.twitter.com/qlGEJMNdyF
— Engineering at UWE (@EngineeringUWE) November 5, 2018
Lottie Dolls MD Ian Harkin said: “This is the third year we have worked with WES during #TEWeek, last year we reached over 500,000 people during the week with really powerful imagery of engineers in their workplace together with Lottie. The images then get shown to children by their parents and teachers by following #LottieTour and #TEWeek18 on social media. We have potentially 10 times the number of companies/people participating this year.”
Today our #LottieTour continues! She is out & about assisting one of our train drivers travelling to Toton. If you are interesting in joining #TeamRed visit the careers page on our website https://t.co/vwU4SmDKkp #TEWeek18 #careers #womeninrail #leadingthenextgeneration pic.twitter.com/BGz3ypCsdM
— DB Cargo UK (@DBCargoUK) November 6, 2018
Mr Harkin continued: “If you can see it you can be it” really rings true here, there are so many exciting careers that we are privileged to get an insight into during the week, the hope is that it will spark an interest for a future potential career in engineering or science.”
If you would like to follow Lottie’s Tour this year, all of the images from the week can be viewed by searching #LottieTour on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or following @YMB1919 and @Lottie_dolls on Twitter.
