Mundy Cruising owners Edwina and Matthew Lonsdale will expand their programme aiming to create greater social mobility, diversity and inclusion in the travel and cruise industry.
Edwina and Matthew created The Compass Project at the start of 2023 and supported 12 Year 12 students from St John Bosco College in Battersea participate in eight off-site days designed to improve their industry knowledge and career prospects.
The pair have now committed to running the programme at St John Bosco College for a second year in 2024 and will expand it to a school in Southampton.
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Edwina said she is “excited” to stretch the programme to the port city as students living there will be aware of cruising and can work with cruise lines based locally.
“This year’s programme was so exciting because so many people were involved across the cruise industry who all contributed different things to teach the kids about all aspects of working in the cruise industry,” she said.
“The students loved hearing about all the individuals’ different career paths and they learned that you can start doing one job in the industry and suddenly there are all these opportunities to move into other jobs until you find the perfect place for you.”
She continued: “Our ultimate goal is to get more schools. Once we’ve got London and Southampton bedded down, other port cities will be really interesting to try and work with, such as Liverpool and Newcastle.
“Then it would be great to go to inner-city schools with diverse groups of students so we can bring more variety into the industry.”
She added: “Within 10 years we’ll have a group of people out there championing the industry as alumni from the programme and they can speak to people interested in getting a career in the industry who can look up to them and follow in their footsteps, all from our little acorn of an idea.”