Category: Charity Insights 2016

Reflections after Four Weeks at Full Fact.

When I started at Full Fact, I wanted to build a program to carry out their first ever automated factcheck.

Four weeks later, that what’s I finished with: so far, the automated factchecker can check ‘Employment is rising’. It reads the word ‘employment’, goes to the Office for National Statistics’ labour force data, and runs a couple of simple tests to get an idea of whether the number of people in work really is rising.

Beyond that one example, the code I wrote shows real promise. It understands what kind of data needs to be looked up when presented with an example sentence.

I spent four weeks on a problem that will take months to solve, so I was only creating a basic framework. Although I did not have enough time to get deep into the part of the software that analyses ONS data, I was able to find a good approach for the part that understands what data to retrieve.

There are still many challenges. When you get into all the different ways sentences are formulated, it seems impossible that there might be one way to process them all. How do you work out that ‘since 2010’, ‘recently’ and ‘last month’ all give you information about time periods, while ‘to Europe’ and ‘in my constituency’ are both location-related?

By looking at phrases from different points of view, and discussing them with others, I found and was able to implement a structure for the code that will form a good basis for future work.

It turned out my time at Full Fact was about more than just coding. Along with experience programming and communicating, I learnt about linguistics, an unexpected but interesting field. To make sure that the tool picked up all relevant claims, and excluded irrelevant ones,I had to think about the construction of speech in some detail.

I also learnt it’s difficult to get tired of £2.50 falafel wraps at lunchtime.

Who wants to be the barrister for the defence? (2)

Another bright day greeted me as I left home to reach the Royal Court of Justice at the beginning of my second week. Since the bus takes the same amount of time as walking, I decided to stroll my way to NCCL’s office, while listening to historical podcasts. In a week I learned about eunuchs, Agrippina, the war of butter vs. margarine and Alexander the Great, just to cite a few. And I found a great Law-related collection of radio shows, Law in Action (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tgy1). I also signed up to an online magazine, the Law Society Gazette (http://www.lawgazette.co.uk). The more I read, the more I saw how complex the legal system is. Not that I expected to find it simple. Anything that tries to give order to life is, ironically enough, incredibly complex. Like physics. Or neural signals, which follow an order of their own that we are not very close to understanding yet. Oh, apologies, I am digressing into a neuroscience rant.

Back at NCCL I kept on reading about Public Legal Education: with recent cuts to legal aid, it seems it is down to us citizens to be savvy about the law, or ‘legally capable’. I started thinking that life without legal awareness is like going to school not knowing you will be tested on a history lesson you decided not to study the night before. Only that the consequences of not knowing your lesson are pretty mild compared to the possibility of being taken to court, or taking someone to court.

NCCL and other PLE organizations have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. They have the chance to plant the seed of legal curiosity in young people, potentially preparing them to face problems once they go out into the world. As I watched two ‘Court in Session’ (http://www.nccl.org.uk/?activity=courtroom-workshops-4) mock trials during my second week, I thought NCCL is doing something great. Yes, you might think I am very biased, but I am just telling you what I saw. Two different schools came on Monday and Thursday. On Monday it was a group of 15-year-old girls who came to the RCJ to act out a cyberbullying case. The session went very smoothly. I was genuinely impressed by these ‘little women’, each playing their role: the two barristers for the defence and prosecution had to quickly think on the spot, while the judge looked over the trial with composure and severity not so dissimilar to the look I expected a real judge to wear. And if there were ever any difficulties during the trial, Tom was able to almost nonchalantly lead the group to the next point, ensuring they took home the right message. On Thursday a group of students from Hong Kong on a summer scheme came along to do a murder trial (always a mock, of course). Now this group was well prepared! They had already picked their roles, with the different witnesses reciting their parts to perfection, and the two barristers asking clever, to the point questions, holding onto the bundle of notes they had brought along.

These sessions were a practical example of how students can take on a role completely foreign to them and act it out comfortably in a real court room.

During the rest of the week I researched more into judicial diversity, reading statistical reports, finding articles and government press releases on the subject. Upon Professor Moran’s suggestion, I looked through this website too http://first100years.org.uk/, a project that puts together testimonies of women that had a career in law. If you have 5 minutes to spare, go have a look: there are some great stories in there.

I walked home that Friday at the end of my second week, wondering if in any of those kids the seed of legal curiosity was slowly planting its roots.

As for me, my little curiosity plant was definitely growing fast.

My first week at the Kensington & Chelsea Foundation

At the end of my first week at the foundation, I have come to know of the extreme contrasts that exist in the royal borough that most of us living here know very little about. The foundation is dedicated to making connections between local charities and businesses and guide them in maintaining long-term commitments.

During my first week, I was briefed about how connections are made with businesses and how information is stored on a database.  I have also learnt about what many of the charities in the borough do and how they help local citizens. It’s amazing what some some charities do in order to help people and how most people are unaware that such help exists. This has helped me see a very “human” side of the borough.

In order to obtain necessary funding for three different charities, the foundation organised a charity evening at a hotel this week. The representatives of the charities presented how any monetary contribution would be used by them. I gained valuable insights into presenting with emotion and clarity.

Before starting my week at the foundation, I was told that they still needed help in raising awareness among small businesses in the borough. My role will be to engage with businesses in K&C personally and bring back details of interest in order to follow up with them. This information must then be added to the database so that communications reach a much broader base. Since I will be representing the foundation, I needed to prepare a list of things that best represent the foundation and what they do.

Working with a team of committed individuals gets me excited to do the best possible job I can for the foundation in the next few weeks to come. I know that I can always ask for help from my helpful colleagues so I am enthusiastically looking forward to the core part of my work here.

 

 

Wait by the entrance on the red cushions (1)

rcj

Note: the Royal Court of Justice (RCJ) is open to the public 9am-4.30pm. However no photos are allowed inside the building. Hence, other than a picture of the exterior of the building, I cannot post photos of the courtrooms or my office. The good news is that you can go to the RCJ anytime and see this beautiful building for yourself. And you can go sit and listen to cases – but more on that in the next post.

On my first day at the National Centre of the Citizenship and the Law (NCCL, http://www.nccl.org.uk/) I was, frankly, terrified. I walked through the airport-like security checks at the Royal Court of Justice (RCJ) and I looked up to the massive hall of the RCJ. What was I doing here? A Neuroscience PhD student to work with a charity that develops education programs to teach young people about the Law? Tom and Anna (the NCCL London-based team) must have been crazy to accept me as their intern. Was I really going to be useful to them? I hoped with my whole heart that my brain hadn’t just become used to learning about the cerebellum and nothing else.

As I waited on the red cushions on the side of the entrance for Anna to pick me up, I looked around. Quite a few people were passing through security, some carrying trolleys of what I expected were piles and piles of documents. Huge paintings hung high over the hall, pictures of judges in their crimson robes looking proud and distant. Members of the public walked in, amazed to find themselves in a building that looks just like a cathedral, but is the location of the second and third highest courts in England and Wales.
Finally, the little digital numbers on my phone changed to 10:00 and Anna appeared. She gave me a big smile and I followed her through the colonnaded corridor and old wooden doors with golden handles to the office.

And so my adventure at NCCL started.

NCCL is part of the Egalitarian Trust, which includes the Gallery of Justice Museums, the City of Caves and NCCL, with offices in Nottingham, London and Manchester.

The learning experiences that NCCLoffers include tours of heritage sites and mock trials acted out by the children on different crimes (more on those next post!). NCCL has a big aim: ‘to empower and inspire young people to live and work within the law’. Have you ever thought how much of your daily life is drenched in law-related issues? No? Well, me neither, until I started my internship here!

From my first day I discovered two things: firstly, I loved being at NCCL the moment Tom gave me a beautifully detailed plan for my internship, with aims, topics, timescale and who to ask for extra information. It was just so strange to have a defined plan: you have a task, you do the work, the task is done! Oh, why aren’t PhDs structured this way? Secondly, I felt I was fit for the job: the tasks Tom gave me involved digging for papers, finding ideas, researching relevant sources. I have always loved that part of my PhD: research evidence, past papers, opinions, etc., and then make sense of all the information gathered to build your own plan. Moreover, Law turned out to be extremely fascinating!

I started researching the two main topics that Tom gave me: Public Legal Education and Diversity in the Judiciary.
So, I dived into the legal system, learning about the different courts, judges and cases and into the different organizations that provide educational programs about the Law. I also managed to buy a great book I saw referenced (if you can, read it, Feminist Judges, Hunter, McGlynn and Rackley) and started reading it.

Over the first week I collected tonnes of information, teaching myself a completely different subject. I also went along to a tour around the building and one of the courtrooms, led by Anna. She took the group to one of the courtrooms dedicated to civil cases (there was no stand for the jury) and I watched as she told us wonderful facts and anecdotes about the RCJ and the Law. We also walked by the robes exhibition: how did I never come to the RCJ before? This place is amazing!

At the end of my first week Tom went over my first findings with me and in the afternoon we had a meeting with one of NCCL’s external collaborators, Professor Leslie Moran at Birkbeck University to better define my tasks.

As I left NCCL at the end of my first week, the church bell next to the RCJ started ringing its beautiful melody, which I wish I could post here.

CAT: Weeks 3 & 4: Farewell to the Hills

I’m on the train home from the Centre for Alternative Technology after finishing the final week of my placement. My four weeks at CAT have been a great experience for many reasons. The people, the work and the amazing natural surroundings have been restorative and given me new energy and perspective. I will miss my morning walk through the ancient woods to the rewilded quarry, the birdsong and the tranquillity of the reservoir.

Throughout my time at CAT I delivered the ZCB talk to a total of 163 people. While the audience figures were on average quite low, I have gained a lot of confidence in delivering aural presentations and public engagement. By the final week I felt that I was beginning to introduce an element of emotion to the talk alongside just presenting the data.

Me presenting the land use scenario in ZCB in the awesome Shepherd Theatre
Me presenting the land use scenario in ZCB in the awesome Shepherd Theatre

During the final week I was invited to another village in North Wales to deliver the presentation by an academic working in the field of psychology at Bangor university. In the future I would like to take the presentation to schools in London, where the audience is likely to be less well informed than the average visitor to CAT. This will depend however on my stress levels after I return to London!

My friend Matthew came and stayed for a few nights in week 3. We practiced some of the techniques I learned on the nature connections course and built a fire with the same reciprocal frame structure that is often used for constructing timber framed round houses. Each post supports the weight of the next (provided there is enough friction) and transmits the force down to the points of contact with the ground.

Reciprocal frame fire structure
Reciprocal frame fire structure

I see this as my first step towards one of my dreams: building my own roundhouse from timber and straw bales. I hope to attend one of CAT’s practical short courses on natural buildings next year. Matt left the centre saying that he felt inspired and that his well-being levels had reached around 9.5. He also said he had resolved himself to give up red meat after watching my talk and discovering that getting the recommended daily intake of protein (55 g) from beef is about 1000 times more carbon intensive, and uses four times the land as than getting it from nuts and seeds.

During my final week I completed the 2-page anti-fracking flyer that I had been working on for Paul. Lots of the skills I gained during my time at Imperial in writing and graphic design came in useful for this. It has been passed onto, John who does all the design for CAT publicity and reports, who will tweak it before it gets uploaded to the CAT website. I will update with the link when it appears online.

Zero Carbon Britain Anti-fracking flyer
Zero Carbon Britain Anti-fracking flyer

Before I left, Paul and I went for a final ‘mindfulness’ walk around the woods together. I was sad to say goodbye and he gave me a big hug, which was touching. I feel like we became friends during my time at CAT and I hope to continue that friendship in the future.

The last four weeks have been a time of learning and personal growth. Hopefully CAT has benefitted from the experience too. I would like to thank the Charity Insights programme and team for giving me the opportunity to experience the alternative world that exists at CAT- I think it has been an experience that will stay with me for a long time to come.

Farewell to the hills
Farewell to the hills of the Dulas valley

Weeks 2 and 3 at the Brilliant Club

Weeks 2 and 3 of my placement

I’ve developed a wide range of skills during the second week at the Brilliant Club. My supervisor was away and has left me a list of tasks to complete that week. This has greatly aided the development of my time management, organisational and written communication skills as I was required to work independently and correspond with participants of the programme, which gave me a great insight into what working for a charity is really like. 

During Weeks 2 and 3, I’ve continued my research into social mobility which is becoming more and more interesting, as I begin to draw links between different publications. In my last week’s post, I mentioned a government issued report, which highlighted London as a huge social mobility hotspot, however after looking at the participation in local areas data released by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, I now know that despite London being a social mobility hot spot, there are areas in the South West and East London where higher education participation is still very low. 

This week I’ve read a research paper by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on widening participation in higher education, combining the data published by many different organisations. One of the most interesting things I found out is that the difference in higher education participation between students from disadvantaged backgrounds arises before entry into higher education, as is mostly due to long term consequences of disadvantaged students underachieving in secondary school, as opposed to students choosing not to attend university despite having the opportunity to do so. Therefore, it has been suggested that to overcome this problem, secondary school students should be targeted by social mobility programmes to ensure that they do not underachieve during their time at school. This particular problem is the aim of the Scholars Programme which I mentioned in my introductory post, as the programme supports the academic development of students from Year 6 to Year 12 thus widening access to higher education, which will be the focus of my next blog post.

I can’t believe the last 3 weeks passed so quickly!

Save the Rhino Final: Data Mining

Throughout my time at Save the Rhino I have had many opportunities to do a mixture of tasks to get a feel for everything that goes into charity work, with a particular focus on corporate relationships. However, working a 2 month period I have managed to “showcase” my skills and have been allocated a final task: data mining.

As a biologist we work strongly in statistics and with writing a personal blog, I find data mining very interesting. For those of you who don’t know: this is the act of searching a customer base to give a profile to a typical customer so that they can be targeted effectively. I was given access to the behind the scenes of all social media and Save the Rhino’s website to get an idea of the kind of supporters and traffic we attract.

I found it absolutely fascinating and terrifying the amount of information we seemed to know about our audience just through likes, favourites, and clicks. It is really interesting to not only know what kind of people we are attracting but also how web platforms are used. At Save the Rhino social media platforms are used by a completely different audience for a completely different reason to the website.

It is a great and final insight into the work of charities. This however is a universal skill that I can carry on to many different kinds of work and I’m glad I was given an opportunity to practice it in my final days.

When first arriving at Imperial College, thinking I had the next 5 years of my life planned, I never once considered working for a charity despite the number of times I had volunteered for one. However this was a different kind of volunteer experience to the rest, I think much of volunteering can be superficial as you’re only there for a few days a week and only for the time period of a couple of months. This experience definitely cannot be described as superficial, I was taught the ins and outs and I am very grateful for it. Perhaps charity work is appearing more on my horizon than I thought.

rhino-sunset

My first week with OneZoom

scrn1-wide-treeWho are OneZoom?

OneZoom are a small up-and-coming charity, founded in 2012, dedicated to providing educational material about evolution. They have developed a tool that allows users to view all species on earth in a huge evolutionary tree (you can see it here: www.onezoom.org/life). It has already been shown at science fairs across the UK, and is now a fixed feature at a number of museums of natural history around the globe. Despite its huge achievements, OneZoom is almost entirely the work of just two people, working in their spare time to make a vast body of knowledge on biodiversity and evolution available to anyone of any age.

 

Why am I working with them?

I first heard about OneZoom when Dr James Rosindell (OneZoom’s founder) gave a lecture at a conference called ‘mathematical approaches to evolutionary trees’. Although I am not a biologist, the word ‘mathematical’ caught my eye and I went along. I was fascinated by the approach that OneZoom took, and after spending several hours browsing the tree that evening, I was hooked. I later emailed James to see if I might be able to work with him, and a couple of outreach events and a research placement later, here I am!

What am I doing?screen2_small

Whilst OneZoom works beautifully on a number of platforms, and can easily be accessed on a mobile phone, it still suffers a little from the reduced performance of mobile devices, meaning that navigation on these devices can be jerky. My role in OneZoom will be to work towards improving these mobile problems, specifically implementing a type of panning used by Google Maps on mobiles, where the image is only redrawn at the end of a swipe, instead of at every point along it.

My first week

Over this last week, I have been becoming familiar with the large codebase that OneZoom consists of, setting up a development environment, and making small improvements to the code along the way. Now I’m moving into the second week feeling familiar with the way things are fitting together, and ready to make a start implementing the panning improvements for mobile. Alongside the programming I’m also helping present OneZoom at the Science Museum Lates this Wednesday, and taking a trip to Oxford next week to work with OneZoom’s team in person. Wish me luck!

Eden Project – Final post

My internship at the Eden Project ended on the 12th of August, and I am now back in Reading missing the Cornish countryside tremendously. The whole internship experience at Eden was an incredible one. I have had some great experiences and met some amazing people and I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with such an esteemed charity.

Carrying on from the previous blog post, by the time my internship had officially ended I had completed the Nuclear Energy masterfile entry and submitted it to Jo, the Director of Interpretations. I am now awaiting feedback on the document. I had not yet completed the Geothermal Masterfile entry as I still had to finish the referencing. However, the research was all complete and Emma and I spent my last week at Eden compiling all of our research into a storyline. The storyline skeleton consisted of key questions: What is geothermal energy – how it works; Why geothermal energy is a good idea and Why is Eden interested in using geothermal energy. For each section, two levels of detail was required. Firstly, the whole section needed to be summarised in three sentences. Secondly, all further additional detail needed to be summarised in 8 bullet points. Overall, this constituted as the backbone for the storyline. This would then be passed on to the graphics team who would pick out certain aspects which sound interesting and would appeal to the public in creating their designs. After sending our proposed storyline to Jo, we had a follow up meeting where she made edits and told us where we need to change what. This was the last ‘official’ meeting during my internship. I have since, completed the geothermal masterfile entry and also edited the geothermal storyline according to Jo’s requests.

During my last week I also had my ‘End of internship’ interview, wherein I sat with Jo and Sarah – my supervisor –  and went through my ‘Start of internship’ interview questionnaire wherein I had written down my objectives, what I hope to contribute and accomplish during my internship, to compare what I had set out to do and what I had actually done. During the discussion we filled out an ‘End of Internship’ questionnaire. The interview went smoothly, I had achieved most of what I had set to do. However, I had underestimated the time it would take to complete two masterfile entries and therefore had not had any time to work on the ‘New and Emerging technologies’ section which I had included in my starting questionnaire. However, Jo and Sarah were very understanding about the time limitations and so this was not an issue.

On my last day, I had a goodbye lunch with Jo and Emma.  It was a great end to the internship, I got to speak with Jo and explain what charity insights was as she was very interested in the scheme and was keen on introducing it to other universities. Afterwards, I bought some chocolate ladybugs – very Eden – for everyone in the office and left after saying goodbye to whoever was still at the office late Friday evening.

Overall, the experience was invaluable. I have now a good grasp on what it is like to work for an educational charity, their work ethics and their problems and issues especially with communicating and engaging the public. Whilst volunteering at charities such as Oxfam before, I was always in the front end i.e. serving customers or working in the shop, helping with layout and gift aid. This was an eye-opening experience as now I  have a good idea about what happens in the back end of charities and the massive amounts of research, teamwork and cooperation that must go into each campaign/project that they produce. Alongside this insight, I have also gained numerous soft skills such as working in a team and interacting with other teams; setting personal deadlines; researching a large topic and picking out relevant information; summarising complicated processes in easy to understand terms amongst various others. To put it short working at Eden has been an experience of a lifetime.

CAT Week 2: People and Environment

Hello from sunny/miserably wet/weather-indecisive Powys.

Visitor numbers and hence audience figures for the Zero Carbon Britain (ZCB) talks have been low due to extremes of hot and wet weather. CAT tends to be busiest when it’s a bit cloudy since most families head to the beach on really hot days, and no-one wants to tramp about in the rain (at a mostly outdoor activity centre) when it’s pelting down! In between giving talks I continued to update the ‘Who’s Getting Ready for Zero’ database with new scenarios although progress has been hampered somewhat by an ultra-slow satellite link-up internet connection… At the end of last week my supervisor Paul and I began discussing the idea of doing a ‘Zero Carbon Liverpool’ for a collaborator and expanding the ‘Zero Carbon’ brand out to cities across the UK. It is not something that I could attempt in my final two weeks here, but instead a possibility for a long-term (6-month) project for the future. Since the database has been difficult to progress with I have taken on producing a two-page ZCB summary flyer for anti-fracking campaign groups so that they can present an alternative to the public.

I have met some really interesting people here at CAT since I arrived. On Tuesday I met a lovely couple, Paul and Fallon who came to my talk. We ended up discussing geopolitics and ecological living for about two hours (the talk is supposed to be 20 minutes long).

The water-powered lift for visitors.
The water-powered lift for visitors.

On Thursday Roger, an old engineer who arrived at CAT in 1977 and who recently designed and built his own steam engine to power his Land Rover helped me take apart and clean an old piano. He was one of the original designers and engineers who built the water-powered lift that takes visitors from the car park to site level.

Last Wednesday I helped out on the door for my supervisor Paul who was giving a talk at a local arts venue, entitled ‘The Extraordinary Story of Human Beings, Energy & Happiness’. The story begins with the Big Bang and charts the course of human and technological development culminating in our present extreme energy culture.

 

The poster for Paul's talk on the history and environmental impacts of human development
The poster for Paul’s talk on the history and environmental impacts of human development

The talk describes how prior to the discovery of fossil fuels, the only energy that humans had access to came from an annual ration of sunlight stored either in plants, wind or rivers. Fossil fuels effectively gave us access to millions of years worth of solar energy, which we have subsequently burned up at an entirely unprecedented rate over the past 150 years or so. Tied-in with this is the story of how consumer Capitalism has given rise to over-consumption through advertising and public relations (originally branded as propaganda). There is then, the requirement for a new narrative and a positive vision for our future in which we live within our annual energy ration, but now with new tools to capture orders of magnitude more energy using renewable technologies. During the talk Paul was accompanied on piano and synth by Lola Perrin, a London-based composer and performer who wrote a score to accompany the piece. It received a lot of praise and positive feedback from the local audience and they have also been invited to perform the the Royal Opera House. I am expecting a front-row invitation.

This week I have been reflecting a lot on the importance of people and teamwork. CAT relies on volunteers and is a tolerant and considerate environment for people to come and work in. Sometimes these qualities mean that people on the fringes of society and with poor social conditioning are accepted onto the volunteer staff. While one of the functions of CAT as a charity is to act as a community hub, over the past week this has proven to be challenging to some of the volunteers (including myself) as one or two strong characters have dominated many social situations. A new week however brings with it a turn around of volunteers and has led to a new and fresh atmosphere.

The CAT reservoir from which drinking water, lifting and hydroelectric power (when it's working) are obtained
The CAT reservoir from which drinking water (don’t worry it gets cleaned), lift power and hydroelectric electricity (when it’s working) are obtained

On the weekend my girlfriend Abi visited and we escaped to the nearby village of Caersws where we looked after some chickens and mostly sheltered from the tempestuous weather.

The sun came out at the beginning of the week and Paul was kind enough to let me swap Tuesday for Saturday so that we could spend the day enjoying the beautiful valley between Machynlleth and Corris. I still haven’t quite managed to persuade Abi to move to North Wales but I think swimming in the CAT reservoir surrounded by lush flora didn’t harm my cause…