Cool careers are the focus of World Refrigeration Day 2021. The annual awareness campaign, which unfolds on June 26 every year, promotes and celebrates the role refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pumps play in global health and productivity, with events of the COVID-19 pandemic particularly accentuating the sector’s critical contribution to food, pharmaceutical and data storage.
This year’s theme — Cool Champions: Cool Careers for a Better World — is an effort to convey that pride and enthusiasm to students and young workers currently pondering education, training and job opportunities. Sixteen webinars, offered in seven different languages and time zones over an eight-day period, will help explore the options and make the case that it’s a welcoming sector and fulfilling career choice for both men and women.
“Refrigeration and cold chain technologies offer invaluable and often life-saving resources to our day-to-day lives,” observes Charles Gulledge, the 2020-21 president of ASHRAE, which is one of seven industry associations, worldwide, endorsing World Refrigeration Day and providing insight and expertise for proceedings.
Other campaign partners include: United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP OzonAction); European Partnership for Energy and the Environment (EPEE); Federación de Asociaciones Iberoamericanas de Aire Acondicionado y Refrigeración (FAIAR); International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR); Indian Society of Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE); and Union of Associations of African Actors in Refrigeration and air Conditioning (U-3ARC). In addition, more than 120 manufacturers/distributors of refrigeration equipment have signed on as sponsoring organizations.
“Partnering with organizations enables the refrigeration industry to reach out globally, with particular emphasis on developing countries, to expand the workforce that supports life-giving and society-dependent technologies,” says Steve Gill, founder of World Refrigeration Day, former president of the United Kingdom’s Institute of Refrigeration and a current ASHRAE committee chair. “Opportunities within the industry abound for young people with a wide range of career aspirations.”
