Author: bmollett

Where Have Previous Charity Insights Participants Been?

As the Charity Insights scheme enters its sixth year in 2017, we thought we’d put together a list of some of the previous destinations for the 80 or so participants who have undertaken projects with charities. If you’re thinking about applying for Charity Insights this year, this list may provide some inspiration – although of course most applicants to Charity Insights approach charities who have not previously hosted an student as part of the scheme!

2016

2015

  • Albert Miquel (Computing, 1st Year) – Lambeth Elfrida Rathbone Society
  • Alhasan Al-Habib (Life Sciences, 2nd)  – Kensington and Chelsea Foundation
  • Anna Lawson (Chem Eng, 1st) – The Long Well Walk
  • Benedict Conway-Jones (Earth Sciences, 1st) – Collegiate Academy Trust
  • Chris Worsfold (Physics, 2nd) – Sense About Science
  • Daniel Gordon (Medicine, 3rd) – Samaritans
  • Farzana Islam (Biology, 1st) – London Tigers
  • Hossein Rezaei (Civil Eng, PhD) – Birmingham Friends of the Earth
  • Jonathan Dong  (Chem Eng, 2nd) – Wild Hearts
  • Mollie Gupta (Life Sciences, 2nd) – Bedfont Lakes Country Park
  • Nathan Cheetham (Physics, PhD) – Carbon Disclosure Project
  • Philip Sayer (Mech Eng, 2nd) – Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability
  • Ryan Sandhu (Civil Eng, 2nd) – FitzRoy
  • Sandra Okala (Medicine, PhD) – Public Health England
  • Scott Tyler Hobbs (Chemistry, 2nd) – YMCA LSW
  • Stephanie Mellor (Physics, 2nd) – Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)
  • Vaibhav Krishnakumar (Computing, 1st) – Asha for Education
  • Visakan Balakumar (Physics, 3rd) – Centre for Community Development / Tamil Women Development Forum
  • Xenia Karlsson (Life Science, 2nd) – Pro-Cancer Research Fund

2014

  • Rupert Belsham, 1st year Physics, The Passage
  • Nicholas Burstow, 2nd year Medicine, Multiple Sclerosis Trust
  • Jun Cao, PhD Medicine, The George Institute for Global Health
  • Anna Cupani, PhD Chemical Engineering, Sense about Science
  • Isabelle Erbacher, 2nd year Medicine, Rethink Mental Illness
  • Martha Hilton, 2nd year Physics, RECLAIM
  • Rebekah Hodgkinson, 1st year Biology, The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust
  • Clara Hurst, 2nd year Chemistry, Thomas Frederick Willets Foundation
  • Ramandeep Kang, 2nd year Physics, Barnado’s
  • Julia Langer, PhD Medicine, Population Health Genomics Foundation
  • Juha Leppanen, 1st year Maths, Green Alliance
  • Elizabeth Mitchell, 2nd year Biochemistry, British Heart Foundation
  • Chandrika Nair, PhD Microbiology, The Small Piece Trust
  • Lee Pearson, PhD Centre for Environmental Policy, CABI Trust
  • Chun-Yin San, 2nd year Biomedical Science, Sense about Science
  • Jay Shah, 2nd year Physics, British Red Cross
  • Chloe Thorn, 1st year Biomedical Science, British Red Cross
  • Thomas Windle, 4th year Mechanical Engineering, Cornwall Wildlife Trust
  • Kristiana Xhuxhi, 2nd year Biochemistry, RSPB (Wild about Hampstead Heath)

2013

If you’d like to talk about Charity Insights and your ideas for a project, book to see us in an Internship Consultation (available four days a week) via JobsLive!

Barnaby & Jess
Placement & Internship Advisers / Charity Insights Coordinators

Charity Insights Participants 2016!

charities

This year, the bar for the standard of Charity Insights was raised yet again, with our applicants proposing some excellent projects. As a result, we had to make some tough decisions to get from our pool of over 40 applications to the smaller number of bursaries available. After a highly competitive process, we are very happy to announce that we will be awarding 22 Charity Insights bursaries to students this summer!

This year’s participants are:

It has been amazing to hear from all the students about the range of projects they will be undertaking this summer and, of course, their progress will be recorded right here on this blog.

Good luck to all this year’s Charity Insights participants!

Charity Insights Visits #2

The Charity Insights tour bus was back on the road once again, with a couple more students to be visited on location. Unfortunately, this bus is entirely metaphorical, so means of less imagined transport included the very literal London underground and South West Trains.

On one of the rainiest days of the year, myself and Jess set out to visit Chris at Sense about Science, a charity attempting to equip people to make sense of scientific and medical claims in the press and public discussion. Working with over 6,000 scientists, they run campaigns such as Ask for Evidence and host panels on subjects such as plant science and energy. Chris had been doing a lot of work around the latter energy panel, as well as sharpening his social media acumen dealing with the charity’s Twitter account. When we met at their north London office, Chris’ supervisor, Chris Peters, had only positive things to say, noting that ‘we’d do well to have more volunteers of [Chris’] calibre’. High praise indeed! We also got to take away a couple of Sense about Sciences Making Sense Of… publications as a parting gift.

Reading the 'Making Sense of Allergies' booklet back at my desk
Reading the ‘Making Sense of Allergies’ booklet back at my desk

I then had the chance to visit Mollie in the great outdoors at Bedfont Lakes Country Park. In addition to the nature reserve, the visitor centre is home to a whole host of animals, including a barn owl, some raccoon dogs, and a jumpy little critter called Toto, a genet.

Mollie with Toto the genet - who was too quick for the camera!
Mollie with Toto the genet – who was too quick for the camera!

The project presented Mollie with a great opportunity to work with a whole host of different animals and learn more about the diversity within the several acres of the reserve. It wasn’t all about learning, however, as Mollie also ran sessions with young visitors to the park, including showing off spiders and exploring nature trails. Again, feedback from both staff and Mollie was overwhelmingly positive – and I got see my first ever genet!

One of the titular lakes of Bedfont Lakes Country Park
One of the titular lakes of Bedfont Lakes Country Park

As the final Charity Insights projects are coming to a close, I’d like to thank all the host organisations for providing great opportunities for all of this year’s participants to really get involved and contribute during their 4 weeks, and of course a big hand to all the students for blogging over the summer!

Charity Insights Visits #1

I’ve been out on my travels in the last week, getting the opportunity to visit some of our esteemed Charity Insights participants. I was pretty excited to get to see some of the first fruits of 2015 Charity Insights’ labour in full flow; following projects from application form to literal application in a professional setting.

First up was Farzana at London Tigers, just a short hurtle on the Hammersmith & City line away near Westbourne Park.  London Tigers engage with disadvantaged communities, providing employment and training skills programmes and running youth and sports clubs to young people in the capital and beyond.

A tiger
No literal tigers were spotted on this visit…

When I entered London Tigers’ HQ, I was greeted by Farzana and her supervisor, Business Development Director Taj Oberai. As we sat down to have a chat, I was instantly distracted by shelves loaded with hauls of sporting trophies, glimmering in the Westbourne Park sun. I commented that it must be nice to have very visual reminders of the rewards of the work those at the organisation put in, with which Taj agreed. Farzana would be continuing to volunteer with London Tigers on a part-time basis, and clearly valued the experience and skills she had been able to gain so far in her remit sourcing supporters and sponsorship for some of the charity’s events. Taj was also delighted to have had Farzana and her skillset on hand, declaring her an excellent intern  – a Charity Insights success!

Next up, I travelled the shortest of distances to visit Vaibhav, who was completing a comprehensive project report for Asha for Education. Vaibhav was focusing on one of the charity’s main areas: youth unemployment in India, and the subsequent need for setting up programs for skills development. It was clearly an undertaking that required the most of Vaibhav’s analytical and research skills, so as a massive fan of getting those transferable skills developed for your career, I was delighted! Vidhya, who had been supervising Vaibhav, also had only positive things to say about his work ethic, and how the project being done would truly aid Asha’s charitable mission.

My final visit on the first leg of the  ‘Charity Insights World Tour 2015’ was just up the way to our very own St. Mary’s campus, to visit Steph at the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). After a period of genuine amazement that my Imperial ID card got me into a campus building I’d never been to before, Steph met me and showed me her workstation, loaded up with some of the mapping software she’d been learning to use.

Imperial's St. Mary's campus
Imperial’s St. Mary’s campus

One of the key things Steph had got from the project was the chance to learn R, and then use it in an applied setting in order to help the SCI map instances of the schistosomiasis disease in different African countries. Michelle, Steph’s supervisor and full-time SCI researcher, said that the code Steph had worked on was something that they’d been hoping to get done for a long time, but it was only because of the Charity Insights scheme and Steph’s being there that had actually got the task completed.

All in all, I was more than suitably impressed by the range of tasks that Farzana, Vaibhav, and Steph had being getting on with in their projects, and the whole host of skills and experience they had developed and used in a work environment. Roll on, the next leg of the tour!

20 students taking part in Charity Insights 2015!

After a competitive application and interview process, we’re delighted to announced that 20 Charity Insights bursaries are being awarded to students this year! With a very high standard of entries, successful students will be heading out to complete a 4-week project with their chosen charity over the summer vacation. Yesterday saw a number of the students going out on Charity Insights attend a preparation workshop to meet fellow participants and to learn more about making the most of the experience (plus just a little bit of admin).

This year’s participants are:

  • Albert Miquel (Computing, 1st Year) – Lambeth Elfrida Rathbone Society
  • Alhasan Al-Habib (Life Sciences, 2nd)  – Kensington and Chelsea Foundation
  • Anna Lawson (Chem Eng, 1st) – The Long Well Walk
  • Benedict Conway-Jones (Earth Sciences, 1st) – Collegiate Academy Trust
  • Chris Worsfold (Physics, 2nd) – Sense About Science
  • Daniel Gordon (Medicine, 3rd) – Samaritans
  • Farzana Islam (Biology, 1st) – London Tigers
  • Hossein Rezaei (Civil Eng, PhD) – Birmingham Friends of the Earth
  • Jodie Denmark (Chemistry, 2nd) – Rosa
  • Jonathan Dong  (Chem Eng, 2nd) – Wild Hearts
  • Mollie Gupta (Life Sciences, 2nd) – Bedfont Lakes Country Park
  • Nathan Cheetham (Physics, PhD) – Carbon Disclosure Project
  • Philip Sayer (Mech Eng, 2nd) – Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability
  • Ryan Sandhu (Civil Eng, 2nd) – FitzRoy
  • Sandra Okala (Medicine, PhD) – Public Health England
  • Scott Tyler Hobbs (Chemistry, 2nd) – YMCA LSW
  • Stephanie Mellor (Physics, 2nd) – Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)
  • Vaibhav Krishnakumar (Computing, 1st) – Asha for Education
  • Visakan Balakumar (Physics, 3rd) – Centre for Community Development / Tamil Women Development Forum
  • Xenia Karlsson (Life Science, 2nd) – Pro-Cancer Research Fund

Finally, I’d just like to issue a well done and good luck to all our participants!

Barnaby
Placement & Internship Adviser

Attendees at this year's preparation workshop for Charity Insights.
Attendees at this year’s preparation workshop for Charity Insights.