Education
Platform
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Which Side of the Tracks?
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Platform
Platform Rail Education Resources
Platform is an award winning Community Rail education scheme developed and managed by Worcestershire, Severnside, Transwilts, Gloucestershire and South Wessex Community Rail Partnerships.
The Platform team provide rail and curriculum related lessons to young people across the South West of England. Students are taken on familiarisation trips on the train and learn about rail safety and career opportunities within the industry.
Through free workshops, train-trips, and bespoke, local resources, Platform helps teachers to build their students’ knowledge of rail-safety, their understanding of sustainable and healthy travel, and their confidence in using trains.
Platform supports schools in building cultural-capital with out-of-classroom experiences; helps schools to embed sustainable learning into their curriculum; and promotes access to future opportunities available to young people through train travel.
Platform is sponsored by Train Operating Companies GWR and Cross Country together with Community Rail Network.
Influencing Positive Change and Sustainability
Platform – Winner CRN Award 2022
The Community Rail Network Awards took place on the 6th of October 2022 in Manchester and saw Platform Rail Community Education Scheme, which is a project created by Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Severnside and Transwilts Community Rail Partnerships, as one of the big winners.
Sharing a vision to develop an education offer throughout their areas, the Community Rail Partnerships worked together to create a scheme to support schools to engage with the rail industry.
For more information about Platform, visit their website platformrail.org
Which Side of the Tracks? – County Lines Video
Which Side of the Tracks? - County Lines Video
Known as ‘County Lines’, gangs and organised criminal networks move illegal drugs and weapons from one area to another using dedicated mobile phones lines.
They groom children and vulnerable adults to assist them with this by using coercion, intimidation, and violence.
The National Crime Agency reports that the rail network is being used for 40% of the movement of illegal drugs across the UK.
The video has been developed in partnership with Worcester Cathedral, Platform, the Clewer Initiative, Mothers’ Union and Worcestershire Community Rail Partnership (WCRP).
The video is available fro viewing on YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/geOl8LUk5c4
WCRP wins Community Rail Network Award 2024 – Second place
We are thrilled to have received this award for our Interchange project. We hope that it will serve to raise wider awareness of this criminal activity and, most importantly, show how we can all work together to prevent children being exploited in this way.
The Interchange project was developed in response to the growing number of young people being coerced into dangerous criminal activity such as ‘county lines’ drug trafficking.
The film was shown at Worcester City Council’s Safer Communities Day in June 2023, where over 250 school students took part in discussions around the themes presented in the film.