Charity Insights

And it has come to an end. A really interesting experience…

I finished the main report I was putting together for the waste campaign. This will be published on the Birmingham Friends of the Earth website in the near future and also will be used in other publications and communications of the organisation.

Along the road, I benefited from feedback and insight of other long-lasting members of the organisation; to understand the campaigning basics and specifically with relation to the waste campaign. The campaign has got more to go before achieving its goals, and of course the end success matters hugely, but I think the journey is greatly rewarding as well and something to enjoy.

Spending time with people with great passion about what they do and a different way of doing things and seeing the world from a different angle all provide very valuable experience. I was doing this on a part time basis, and that was really good as I got opportunity to be exposed to development of the project for a relatively long period of time.

Looking back from the first time I got to know about Charity Insight (that was more than a year ago), until today that I finishing my last day, I see a great sequence of activities, from applying and interviews to undertaking the work at the organisation as all part of a very interesting journey and much to learn and enjoy. I would do it definitely again it I went back to the first day I heard about it 🙂

I am planning to continue working with the Birmingham Friends of the Earth after this project as well. I believe what they do is important specifically with the direction the whole world is heading towards ignoring the environment and the ‘right things’. And they are a great bunch of guys to share a passion with.

Get engaged with the FOE if you have some time, it is great 🙂 (www.green4good.ca)

Read Friends of the Earth – last week in full

Here we are, my third post. Two quick section here, one on my work progress so far, and then a bit from my experience of doing Charity Insight.

Section a) The work keeps getting even more interesting, as we go along. I am still working on the first bit of research I was doing for waste management strategy for Birmingham. We have found some interesting facts about other local authorities and how they manage their waste and what lessons are to be learnt from them. The report will be public after finishing it if anyone would ever be interested to have a look. Of course, it is getting harder than ever to get the politicians to consider environmental issues, when there are increasing constraints on their budget. Even though some of these actions will eventually save them more money, the fact of doing something different which might cost some money short term with greater long term benefit scare them! Well, nothing too bad, this simply means more convincing required 🙂

Section b) Having spent around ¾ of my work so far, I see the charity insight experience very interesting. It puts you in a new environment with people having different drive and enthusiasm, working for something they passionately believe in and enjoying each other’s company and the benefit they provide to their end user as the main drive. In addition, I guess you are regularly dealing with precision of science and medicine, and exercising your brain taking it to an area outside these is very useful. And it feels quite good doing something you see the outcome of it could have a real impact on many people. I would definitely recommend this to anyone. And I did it part time, and I think this was quite a good experience as well, both for me and for the organisation.

One week to go…

Read Friends of the Erath – week 3 in full

Just a quick summary; I am doing my CI project with Birmingham Friends of the Earth; and I am looking at the waste management strategy in Birmingham and how different/better this can be, so we can ask the city council to make a better deal when the current contract comes to the end. It seems quite logical to expect to benefit more from waste (‘waste isn’t rubbish’); and also get local companies to deal with it (so to keep the money in the region and more jobs, etc.)

I have had some joys focusing on investigation into two things. One is about what other similar (in size, demography, etc.) cities are doing that Birmingham is not and could learn from. There are other cities, like Bristol, that has been doing some quite nice and green initiatives to drive their waste prevention and minimisation; and also reuse and recycling. I am looking at various cities in the country to see what they are doing and what can be learned from them.

we all remeber to recycle, don’t we? 🙂

The other things is about local capabilities. Of course, the council will need to ensure the waste issue is looked after properly. And if it is to use the local companies to deliver the waste management, it needs to make sure there are capabilities to do this. I am looking at what we have in the region and whether it is possible (of course with required development when the time comes) to undertake the tasks locally.

These tasks have kept me busy for most of my time. But in addition to these, learning from the other volunteers and also workers here is the real learning for me. There are various people with different views and background, but all with passion for what BFEO seeks to achieve.

More is coming next week… 🙂

Read Friends of the Earth – next step in full

First a quick overview: I am Hossein; doing an engineering doctorate in water engineering. My Charity Insight project is with the Friends of the Earth (FOE), Birmingham.

FOE is an international network of environmental organisations operating in 74 countries. There are many different campaigns at local, national and international level that FOE is involved with. At the local branch in Birmingham, FOE are currently running few campaigns one of which is the ‘waste campaign’; this is the one I am currently working on.

The issue is quite straightforward; a lot of waste and not the best way to deal with it. The campaign is calling on Birmingham city council to implement a greener waste management system. This mainly includes making it easier for people to recycle more types of waste, recycling food waste and using local companies to process the waste.

An Incinerator (courtesy of: birminghampost)

Birmingham is not doing great in recycling, and around 70% of the waste goes to incinerator, that means “burned”! Well, trying to make some electricity from the process, but not very efficient and also not very good for CO2 emissions… it is estimated more than 40% of the residual waste sent to the incinerator is organic matter; and if this is taken out, it can be treated in much better ways, e.g. anaerobic digestion, to generate renewable energy. Of course, it is better to follow the waste hierarchy to reduce what waste is actually produced.

Waste hierarchy (courtesy of: Wikipedia)

Here we are campaigning for the council to take a better waste management strategy for when the current contract of waste burning comes to an end (2019). I am doing background research to investigate what other councils are doing in this matter and also what capabilities exists in the area to deliver the new waste plan.

Watch the space, more update coming as how I and the campaign are doing 🙂

Read Friends of the Earth-start in full