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Maasvlakte Social Commitment: what do we give back to the community?

syncreon‘s Maasvlakte facility is constantly carrying out activities encouraging social commitment across the facility. For the second year running, Maasvlakte has been host to a number of students from “JINC”. JINC is a part of the ‘BRIDGE Project’ supported by the European fund Urban Innovative Actions. JINC ensures that students from socio-economic disadvantaged neighborhoods gain further insight into the labor market and into their own skills.

What is the Bridge project?

Building the Right Investments for Delivering a Growing Economy, abbreviated as BRIDGE, is a three-year program of the South partners united in the National Program Rotterdam Zuid (NPRZ) that is financially supported by the European fund Urban Innovative Actions (UIA). With the money from UIA, children in the South of the Netherlands, approximately 2000 young students annually, are helped to gain a stronger position in the labor market.

In the South of Rotterdam, there is a large mismatch between education and the demand on the labor market. Too many pupils make a choice for financial, administrative and legal training after secondary vocational education, while jobs in these sectors decrease. Within the NPRZ, pupils are encouraged at an early age to choose promising sectors such as port, care, food and technology.

The students visited the syncreon Maasvlakte facility to learn about our work environment in areas such as administration, quality, planning and physical work processes. The young students and mentors had a warm welcome at the main entrance by our manager Leo Groeneveld. They were kindly invited to follow all procedures and meet each other in our meeting room. After a short introduction, the group were offered soft drinks, chocolate and snacks, which went down very well! While enjoying the moment, Leo Groeneveld briefly introduced syncreon Maasvlakte and played a movie about the site’s processes. With a basic knowledge of the site, the students were invited to the production area to partake in work experience. The first rule before entering the warehouse was safety, so the students put on their safety shoes and high visibility vests. Our 1st Operator gave the students a tour of our production area and shortly explained the work processes. They were then split into groups. Under the care of our best trainers, they were given a short explanation on work to be done and performed actual work in several areas: such as the pack-out stations of the production machines, manual pre-production areas and PETBOX area, all the activities depended on their ages to ensure safety came first!

The students took great enjoyment in carrying out the work they were assigned! They were very positive about the visit and they left our facility with a vision for their future. This is vital to their development and gave those syncreon a great feeling to be involved in the project. A representative on behalf of the European fund Urban Innovative Actions was also present, and was very impressed by the positive atmosphere, attitude, multi-cultural environment at syncreon, smiling and enjoying working with Maasvlakte staff members.