Charity Insights 2016 – Page 3

Departure from Paignton

25 August 2016

Ben Collier

So I’ve finally reached the end of my stay here in Paignton – and I know its cliché to say – but the time really did fly past! I really can’t believe its been a whole five weeks already. During my internship I learnt so much more than I thought I would about zoological research and now feel really confident in a lot of new skills . In this last week here I’ve simply continued the work I was doing at the half-way point, only now with complete independence.

The cutest and most amazing animal ever, the Emperor Tamarin

Looking back on my time as a whole, I have plenty of great memories and experiences. Everybody I met during my internship was amazingly supportive and lovely. What else would you expect from a group of biologists, eh? If I’m being completely honest though, I think I’m going to miss the primates more than anything – the Emperor Tamarins and Goeldis in particular. They’ve both now cemented themselves on my highly coveted list of favourite animals. An honourable mention also goes to the King Colobus family (and their new baby girl!). Maybe I’ll visit Paignton again in the years to come to see her as she grows up.

It wasn’t all easy though, I definitely will not be missing staring at vaguely Diana monkey shaped objects in the distance and trying to figure out whether they’re grooming or scratching, nor will I miss attempting to follow the five miniscule Pygmy Marmosets as they jet around their enclosure. It will also be nice to sleep in past 7am when I get back too…

Overall, I would just like to thank everyone at the Whitley Wildilife Conservation Trust for being so welcoming, as well as Lewis from Monkey Heights and the entire Ape Centre team for putting up with me bothering them every morning and endlessly asking “wait, what vegetable is this?” as I weighed up food. Personal thanks also go to Dr. Joanna Newbolt for all her help in my first few days as well as Louise for training me in my first two weeks. Thanks also go to the media team at the zoo for accepting some of my photographs for publishing on their webpages in the near future (I was hoping they’d be posted before this blog but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case!). I would, of course, also like to thank the entire charity insights team for awarding me this amazing opputunity because, without the funding and support I received, I would not have been able to relocate from London to Paignton and gain this invaluable experience.

My first week at The Brilliant Club

Dominika Niedzwiedzka

21 August 2016

Dominika Niedzwiedzka

During my four-week placement I will be working at the Brilliant Club, a charity which focuses on widening the participation of students from disadvantaged backgrounds at highly-selective universities. The charity runs a successful Scholars Programme which helps students to secure places at university by organising tutorials with PhD tutors for small groups of Year 6 to Year 12 students.

The charity is also in charge of running the Nuffield Research Placement in Greater London and Surrey which is the programme I am working on. The programme provides Year 12 students with the opportunity to complete a summer research placement in a STEM field thus enabling them to gain extremely valuable skills and experience, thus aiding them with their university application as well as equipping them with core competencies of a successful scientist.The scheme encourages applications from students with no family history of going to university, as well as those who attend schools in less well-off areas therefore the scheme greatly supports the idea of social mobility which I am greatly passionate about.

The reason why I’ve picked the Nuffield Research Placement scheme is because I completed a Nuffield Research placement at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre located in the Hammersmith Campus of Imperial College in the summer of 2014. The placement has greatly influenced both my university as well as course choices – it’s one of the main reasons why I’ve decided to apply to Imperial. Having experienced the great impact of the scheme myself, I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to see what the programme looks like from the other perspective whilst examining what social mobility is, what makes a successful social mobility scheme and what we can do to ensure to make such schemes even more effective, especially in the long term.

My first week

During the first week of my placement, I’ve focused on researching social mobility and looking at various social mobility related statistics which I will discuss later on, as well as seeing what running the programme for London and Surrey area entails. On my first day, we have visited students currently completing a placement at University of East London which has been designed to enable the students to develop key skills through independently carrying out research on a rapidly progressing area of science such as nanotechnology which will be of great help at university and beyond.

I’ve started my research on social mobility by reading a government issued report on the Social Mobility index, which looks at how well students from disadvantaged backgrounds do at school, and if they succeed later on in life. The educational attainment and outcomes achieved by adults serve as indicators of the extent of social mobility in the area, thus enabling the social mobility hot spots and cold spots to be identified. However, despite there being social mobility hot spots such as London, there is still a lot of work to be done to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially from areas where opportunities are not within reach, in securing places at university, good jobs and throughout their studies, which I will discuss in detail in my upcoming blog posts.

Internship with LED: Final Week

Fiona Townsend

16 August 2016

Fiona Townsend

My internship has come to an end, my report has been completed and submitted to my supervisor and, so far, the feedback has been positive. I spent the final week continuing to write up my research and editing the content, reworking the structure and ensuring the formatting allowed me to present my findings in the best way possible.

I also met more of the trustees of the charity to hear about the work they do and to discuss the experiences they have had when visiting Nepal and Peru on numerous occasions and distributing the lights as they made their way up the mountain ranges. Hearing first-hand information about the lights that are currently being used and the feedback the trustees have heard from the recipients helped me to compare this standard to the other models I was evaluating. It helped to further define the necessary specifications of any products that should be recommended as it meant I could fully understand the kind of problems the lights can sometimes present.

Overall this has been a really enjoyable and rewarding experience. LED have been an amazing charity to work with and I hope to stay in contact with them and keep up to date with the work they are doing. Conducting my research and writing this report has been really eye opening as I had not previously realised how big a market there is for these products and how many charities there are focusing on delivering renewable solutions in developing countries. It was interesting to find out about the solar technology being implemented to provide light and electricity in rural areas, as well as new innovations to harness the power of movement and gravity, among others.

I would highly recommend taking part in the Charity Insights scheme; it offers the chance to spend a summer making a difference within a charity and gaining experience in an interesting field of work. This internship has made it clear to me that this is an area of research and innovation that I would like to explore following my degree, and I look forward to conducting my masters project into solar materials, hopefully building on what I have learnt over the summer.

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT): Week 1

Phil Calado

15 August 2016

I’ve had a rollercoaster ride of a first week at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) situated at the border of the Snowdonia national park in Wales. CAT is an education and visitors centre that aims to demonstrate solutions to sustainability. It was founded in the early 70’s in a disused slate quarry at a time when the scale of environment degradation from human activities was only just beginning to be understood. The early pioneers wanted to develop technology that could be of benefit to humans, nature and the economy. In a similar spirit, during CAT’s existent the quarry has been ‘rewilded’, and now hosts an abundance of wildlife.

This is the entrance to CAT. When it's working, there is a car lift that uses that is water powered. I'll explain more next time. — *Here’s the entrance to CAT. When it’s working, there is a car lift that is water powered.*

It’s a kind of living laboratory for experimenting primarily with building and permaculture techniques. Many of the practices, materials and techniques developed here are finding their way into mainstream modern architecture. My favourite so far has been synthetic slate tiles that are made from recycled car tyres (touching is believing!).

*Synthetic slate roof made from car tyres*

I arrived on Monday, exhausted having just finished revision of a manuscript for publication at Imperial. I really, really could have done with a holiday! Instead I had volumes of literature to read in preparation for my designated project: I am presenting CAT’s flagship research project ‘Zero Carbon Britain’ (ZCB) to visitors to the centre during twice daily talks. ZCB is a technical energy scenario that presents a positive vision of how Britain can transition to zero CO2 emissions within around two decades. It aims to inspire debate and inform policy on how we can rapidly decarbonise the UK, whilst also highlighting the co-benefits of a zero carbon society e.g. cleaner air and healthier lifestyles.

Probably my favourite building- the walls are just straw bales with lime render and it's been standing for a couple of decades. — *Probably my favourite building at CAT- the walls are just straw bales with lime render and it’s been standing for a couple of decades already*

I gave my first talk on Wednesday and have been steadily gaining confidence with the multitude of facts and figures that are required to look like any kind of authority on the subject. The audience figures have not been as high as we would have liked (ranging from around 2 – 14 per session) but the level of engagement and debate all round has been really positive. Alongside this core project I have started working on an update to an existing report called ‘Who’s getting ready for zero?’, which “…maps out how different actors at national, regional and city levels are already modelling the elimination of GHGs on science-based timeframes compatible with 2ºC.” Essentially ‘Who’s getting ready for zero?’ collates information from reports like Zero Carbon Britain from around the world to show what could be done to decarbonise the planet.

CAT has a great atmosphere to it. The people here are really friendly, helpful and there is a common purpose to the staff and volunteers. Outside of work I have been finding time to both socialise and to enjoy the beautiful natural surroundings. As an intern I have the privilege of being able to attend short courses that CAT runs here over the summer free of charge. I was lucky enough to participate in the ‘Nature Connection’ course that ran over the past weekend. The aim of the course was teach practices and routines for connecting more strongly with nature, for example by having a designated ‘sit spot’ which you visit every day to mindfully observe the plants, animals and landscapes around you. The course turned out to be much more powerful than I imagined (given that I was slightly cynical at the beginning). I could write a whole other blog about it but needless to say I highly recommend any reader to attend something similar. I came away feeling energised and ready for the new week ahead!

This is my new sit spot where I contemplate life and the universe... — *This is my new sit spot where I contemplate life and the universe…*

BNA: THE INTERNSHIP ENDS (3/3)

Anna Johnson

12 August 2016

Anna Johnson

I CAN’T BELIEVE FOUR WEEKS HAVE GONE BY SO QUICKLY!

The last two weeks have absolutely flown by. I finish my internship today – I’ll be sad to go. I’ve learnt a lot and met some really interesting people.

During my week break the new website went live, and I believe the new neuroscience Journal has been initiated – everyone in the office has been quite busy.

Last week was spent analysing all of the survey data I’d collected, and producing an overall marketing plan which could be used to inform the marketing approach of the BNA. This involved looking at the automatic analysis SurveyMonkey generated, and picking out/discussing the relevant information. In the week following, I formatted this all into a report, along with all of the other bits and pieces I’d been working on, like an application form for the Student Representative Scheme and undergraduate marketing materials.

As it’s my last day today, I’m currently condensing down my report into a succinct ten minute presentation that I can give when I attend the BNA council meeting on 24th August. After this I’m going out with my supervisor for farewell drinks, along with the other intern and her hosting lab – a lovely way to end my internship.

Taken out of context, this is probably a rather strange photo…

To conclude, this internship has definitely given me many transferable skills; it’s been a largely independent project and so I’ve had to practise organising my time effectively, along with learning how to be resourceful and tackle a complex/unexpected problem from many different angles. I hope my project will be of use to the BNA and help to increase their student and associate membership in future.

If anyone reading this is still debating over whether or not to apply for Charity Insights, I would thoroughly recommend it!

<– LAST TIME

The End of the Road

Samantha Hooker

12 August 2016

Samantha Hooker

I have now completed my one-month internship with Anthony Nolan. For those of you who haven’t read my previous blog posts, Anthony Nolan is a charity that saves the lives of people with blood cancers or blood disorders. They match patients in need of a bone marrow transplants to selfless donors who have signed up to their register.

The internship was not quite what I had expected. This was in part because my original project goals changed. Initially my project was to create and share digital content that would encourage young men to sign up to the register. My first week went to plan and I studied research into how young men interact online but after that instead of creating new content I worked on promoting a piece of content called Donny and the Professor Cure Blood Cancer that tells the story of how a bone transplant works in a comic book themed story (and it’s a lot better than anything I could have done). The whole series can be found at www.anthonynolan.org/Donny.I also used the time to develop a spreadsheet of patient appeals from the past two years using Facebook to find the reach of each post and how much it was interacted with in terms of reactions or shares. This can be used by Anthony Nolan to determine which kind of appeal is most successful when they create future content.

So although my project didn’t go exactly to plan it was not half as scary as I expected it to be. The experience was very fulfilling and enjoyable.

During my internship I learnt the importance of teamwork both within one division and between divisions and how vital communication between teams is so the experience has taught me a lot about how to interact in a work environment. It was also so useful to gain an insight into what working for a charity entails and especially great to do it in a charity I care so much about.

I also very much enjoyed working with the Engagement team, they were all kind, considerate and helpful from my first day until my last and I just want to Thank them and everybody else that I worked with during my time at Anthony Nolan for making the experience so good.

I look forward to the year ahead, working with the Marrow team to run fundraising and recruitment events within Imperial.

Save the Rhino: Fast Paced Conservation

Elizabeth Roe

11 August 2016

Elizabeth Roe

Something that I was looking forward to the most when working for a charity that is directed towards animal conservation was the rate of rewards. I have already mentioned that I have worked in field work and at a zoo, but to be able to see the impact your work has on animal conservation in these fields is slow and can take years – even a lifetime. However, charity has easily come up trumps. Work is fast-paced and the benefits of your work are immediate.

Save the Rhino has 13 programmes in Africa and 4 programmes in Asia. With an extensive group of projects around the world that is under their control, there always seems to be good news. Such as Ratu the Sumatran rhino (one of the rarest in the world) being pregnant for a second time or the fact that the team in Swaziland’s Big Game Parks has managed to keep rhino poaching at an all time low with no poaching incidences last year.

Not only is it the regular news from programmes across the world that give you a rush but the constant exchange of funds, whether it be by community fundraising, corporate fundraising, memberships or merchandise. We always seem to be having rhino costumes being returned from somewhere; we have quite a busy little office.

When I look through archives of previous photos, you see how much this charity does and how active they are, especially for a small team of seven.

So you don’t need to be big or need a lifetime to make a difference!

Reaching the halfway point

Benjamin Collier

11 August 2016

Now passing the halfway point of my time here at Paignton zoo, I’ve switched to becoming almost completely independent in the work I’m doing. From the start, the general idea was that I would have two weeks of training with the project leader, followed by two/ three weeks of unsupervised work. The overall project itself is now in its third phase. Now that the ‘before’ and ‘during’ data has been collected over the year for the primate’s probiotic treatment it’s time to analyse some of the possible lasting health benefits in the ‘after’ stage. Excitingly, early data analysis is looking good already. For my remaining time here I’ll be continuing to assemble behavioural, faecal and food intake data ready for the end of the project.

With this new independence I’ve had to now create my own timetable, somehow mixing and matching 20 half-hour slots of behavioural observation over each week (I’ve given myself an early finish on Friday, naturally). I also now have to organise myself in the mornings as I weigh out the morning and afternoon food for the day, prepare desiccation pots, collect leftover food from the enclosure and complete faecal scoring. The process can be confusing at times, especially remembering what food is kept where and timing everything correctly in order to catch the food between it being prepared and given out. Encouragingly, I feel like I’m slowly becoming more confident in the work I’m doing here and also learning a lot. My behavioural observation sessions in particular are becoming much easier as I now know what to expect from each of the individual primates, allowing me to record their behaviour consistently and accurately.

I’ve also now been told that my research group has been able to find a post-graduate student to replace me when I leave. This came as really good news as it means that I will no longer need to squish in 3 species worth of work per week in order to finish the project before having to return to London. I’m looking forward to meeting this new student, despite being a little nervous about training them on procedures I’ve only just completely come to grips with myself…

I mentioned in my first blog post how I wanted to practice some photography whilst I’m here. I was also originally planning to record some footage and interviews for a short documentary video but one broken shotgun microphone later the plan had to be scrapped. However, through my supervisor, I have managed to get in contact with the Zoo’s media department and have emailed them a few images for them to hopefully use on their website, so here’s hoping that goes well! As for the near future, I’m hoping to get some even better snaps of the adorable Goeldi monkeys and Emperor Tamarins as I return to working within their enclosures each morning next week.

I’m looking forward to the final stretch of my time here and will be sad to go when the time comes. The entirety of my experience so far has been absolutely wonderful and a great opportunity for me to gain experience whilst enjoying some of the great treasures the south west of England has to offer.

St. Anne’s – Goodbye for now!

vp513

10 August 2016

Vanessa Place

After what seems like a very short five weeks, my time at St. Anne’s has come to an end. I’ve settled in well and have a great relationship with the service users, so it seems almost too soon to be leaving!

The main aim of my project was to collect data on Spice use (more on that later), but during my time here I’ve also become involved in a lot more of the work that St. Anne’s does. I’ve helped to run the breakfast club every week, which was a great way to meet the clients and talk to them about my project. I was also part of service user involvement sessions, which are designed to allow people to have their say on how St. Anne’s is run and what sort of services it offers. This sense of involvement is at the core of St. Anne’s ethos; service users are encouraged to take an active role in changing their lives and addressing issues that affect them. It’s been really rewarding to see how some of the clients have managed to turn their lives around with the help of the staff.

Back to my project, then. Due to the nature of the work that St. Anne’s carries out and their client base, my data set is smaller than I’d hoped. However, it still offers an eye-opening and valuable insight into Spice use among the service users, which was the aim. It’s not possible to share too much on my blog (due to the confidential nature of the information) but what I can say is that a large volume of service users are dealing with the effects of Spice on a daily basis. This can be anything from blacking out, becoming anxious or aggressive, hearing voices, to witnessing the death of a close friend. I’ve been quite surprised and humbled by the honesty of the clients when we’ve been discussing Spice; the vast majority of people have fallen over themselves to help me get the information I needed. This has been collected into a report for the staff at St. Anne’s, and can hopefully be used as a tool to help them move forward in dealing with Spice use among their clients. The whole process has been fascinating, frustrating and (at times) even upsetting, but it’s been worth it.

I also focused a lot of my efforts on gathering information from the staff at St. Anne’s about their own experiences of Spice. The general mood was one of frustration; the staff have to deal with people who have taken Spice on a daily basis, and quite often these people can become aggressive, behave erratically, or just unresponsive. It’s really forming a barrier between clients and staff, preventing the latter from doing their job.

With this is in mind, I decided to run a service user involvement session for both clients and staff to discuss the findings of my project. The aim was to present what I’ve found to everyone, then allow staff and service users to discuss their experience of Spice in a ‘safe’ space. I felt that it was really important bridge the gap between the staffs’ perception of Spice and the actual experiences of the clients. The session was a huge success; staff opened up to the service users about their feelings of frustration and annoyance, which I think helped clients to see how their actions may be affecting others. Equally, service users then shared their own stories of their experience of Spice, and this allowed the staff to see the other side of the coin. A client may be behaving erratically or being aggressive, but underneath that there is a person who may be extremely frightened or struggling with addiction.

At the end of my internship, I hope that my work will allow St. Anne’s to more effectively tackle the use of Spice among their clients. It was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Spice research, but I hope that in the future others will be able to use my study as a basis for more widespread research. To the wonderful team at St. Anne’s, it is definitely not goodbye. The work they do is challenging but invaluable to their service users, and I’ll be joining them again (this time as a volunteer) after my graduation.

Weeks 2-3 at Full Fact.

Giacomo Boscaini-Gilroy

8 August 2016

Giacomo Boscaini-Gilroy

The automated factchecking project is split between two parts: scanning text and checking its validity. When I started it a few weeks ago, I intended to spend equal amounts of time on each. However, I started off in the first week using some very rudimentary programming tools, and it became clear that it would be much more worthwhile to explore new avenues and come up with new ideas in order to produce work that will be useful in the long term. And the long term is important, because I am kicking off something that will be built on in the coming years.

So I got stuck into the first part, learning about natural language processing and understanding how to tease out the important information from sentences. It’s interesting to spend your time thinking about how language is formulated, and when you see how complicated it is, it makes you wonder how the tech giants have built intelligent personal assistants like Siri and Cortana.

Having found some much more useful analytical tools, I came up with ways to decide what data is required to check the claim that is fed in. There are some immense difficulties and limitations. For instance, how can you tell that “this government has reduced spending on new housing” is a factual claim, but “this government might well reduce its infrastructure investment” is just speculation, and that only one of these should be factchecked?

I saw an opportunity to take a diversion from these thoughts when last week, Director of Full Fact Will Moy was on BBC Radio 4’s moral maze. Giles Fraser, one of the panellists, explored the conflict between technology and humanity in the context of automated factchecking, saying that once a computer algorithm decides what is right and wrong, “the truth” has been dehumanised.

This gives an opportunity to get further into what automated factchecking really aims to do. It does not ask computer software to make a moral judgement like a human can. Full Fact provides people with the tools they need to check things by themselves and come to an informed decision. The factchecks don’t just give a yes or no answer, they also point out the shades of grey. In the same way, my code will not tell you what to believe and what is right, but will allow people to confidently decide for themselves.

Importantly, rather than replacing the factchecker, the software’s role is to make their work easier. Every time a simple phrase like “unemployment stands at 5%” appears, a person should not have to take up their time retrieving statistics from the ONS website, when a computer could do that instead.