Safety Revolution Scholarship (Placement) & Jill Willows Scholarship: Emily Jones

 Emily Jones, 20, from How Caple, Herefordshire is a second year BSc (Hons) Agri-Business student and recipient of Safety Revolution Scholarship (Placement) & Jill Willows Scholarship.

"I come from a rural farming family in South Herefordshire. I consider myself to be a happy, confident and approachable person, who is self-motivated and driven to succeed. I enjoy being surrounded by my family in my free time and also am very passionate about helping people by actively donating blood, whilst also being a registered organ and stem cell donor. I am an active member of my local YFC club, where I have held an officer role for the last five consecutive years, including two years as club chairwoman.

"I was honoured to attend the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) as an OFC Scholar sponsored by Harper Adams University in January. This was as a result of being Chair of the Harper Forum, which is a student-led society that hosts industry speakers for presentations each week. I also featured in the Farmers Guardian “Young Farmer Focus” section after the conference, to talk about the OFC and my placement with Safety Revolution.

"I am currently in my second year at Harper Adams studying BSc (Hons) Agri-Business and am thoroughly enjoying the broad nature of the course.

"I had never considered a career in health & safety until I spoke with the team at Safety Revolution, where I was incredibly inspired by the ethos of the business. As we are all too aware, agriculture has a terrible health and safety record, where many deaths are as a result of terrible accidents – which perhaps could’ve been prevented. I have experienced the death of loved ones and have known grief multiple times throughout my childhood, and consequently feel very strongly that no one should be subject to this heartache if the circumstances can be avoided. In my career I want to work alongside farmers to make a difference and to make the industry safer for our families, so no one need go through the loss of a loved one unnecessarily. I am confident that my placement year with Safety Revolution will be the start of this journey.

"I feel thrilled to have been awarded both the Safety Revolution Scholarship with Placement and the Jill Willows Scholarship.I applied for the Jill Willows Scholarship in a hope to receive additional funding which I could use to gain further qualifications through relevant short courses, such as IOSH accredited exams, in order to build foundations for my future career by increasing both my knowledge and employability in the health & safety sector. Upon learning more about the late Jill Willows, I feel very honoured to have received her scholarship, as from what I understand, she was an inspirational lady and certainly someone to aspire to.

"I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the trustees of the Development Trust for awarding me with the Jill Willows Scholarship, and I also would like to express my thanks and gratitude to Safety Revolution for awarding me with their placement scholarship. I am very much looking forward to joining their team in the summer.

"In my future career, I’d like to be able to help and advise farmers as to how they can better protect themselves, their families, their employees and ultimately their businesses against preventable harm, by implementing sustainable safety measures. I am also certain that educating children and young adults is vital in developing a safety conscious culture in the industry for the future."