Category: Charity Insights 2016

St John Ambulance – Final Week

So after four weeks, today is my last day in the St John Ambulance office here in Bristol. This final week was all about writing my project report, which I have now completed and sent to my project supervisor for feedback on any changes that may need to be made.

My project looked at the duties/events covered by St John Ambulance and the types of injuries treated. It also looked at areas where volunteers wanted more training or felt the training they received could be improved. The results and findings have been included in my report (waiting for approval before attaching a link to it as the report contains some potentially confidential data). However, here is one of the graphs produced:

SWR Results
Percentage, by category, of the events covered in South West Region, 2015.

The graph above shows the percentage of duties/events covered by category in South West Region during 2015. Duties were classified into one of four categories as follows:

  • Low intensity indoor events e.g. Pantos, Films, Theatre Performances, Musicals
  • High intensity indoor events – e.g. Martial Arts, Dance Competitions
  • Low intensity outdoor events – e.g. Fetes/Fayres/Carnivals, Country Shows, Fundays
  • High intensity outdoor events – e.g. Football, Rugby, Motorsport, Equestrian, Racing, Running, Cycling

What’s the relevance of working out the percentages of events covered you may be thinking..? The idea behind calculating percentages was to allow first aid training to be more focussed and specific to the type of events covered. As the data was broken down further into the districts and even further into individual units, it allowed me to see what types of events were being covered and in what proportion. For example, for one unit, 81% of events covered were low intensity indoor events and therefore the recommendation was made that first aid was focussed around the types of injuries/conditions that are most likely to occur as result. Similarly, another unit had over 50% of events covered as high intensity outdoor events, which were mainly equestrian or rugby events. Therefore the recommendation in this case was for first aid training to focus on neck or spinal injuries – as they were commonly associated with such events.

A wider range of topics were addressed in the report and evidence was put forward to support my proposed recommendations for changes/improvements to the training. These will now be put forward to the South West Region Management team, hopefully with some positive results, although of course they are by no means obliged to implement any of the recommendations!

The Charity Insights Scheme has been a great opportunity to experience a workplace environment, particularly a 9-5 office job, and for any future students reading this and thinking about applying through the Charity Insights Scheme, I would highly recommend doing so! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my project supervisor, Des Young, as well as all the other staff in and around the office who have helped me over the past four weeks to achieve the aims of my project. A special thanks also to Jessica and Barnaby for giving me the opportunity to carry out this project!

The end of this project does not mark the end of my time with St John Ambulance however. I will still be out and about either in Bristol or London continuing to help provide first aid cover at events and I will continue to be in touch with Des and the regional team to take forward the findings of my project.

Thanks for reading – hope it’s been interesting!

Internship with LED: Second & Third Week

As I moved into the second week of my internship, I finalised my preliminary research and sorted through the information I had collated to pick out the most relevant details and the points I definitely wanted to include in my report. This allowed me to begin building up a structure for my report and to decide the best order to present my findings in. It also highlighted some areas where more in depth research was needed or where different sources could be used for a new angle.

As well as choosing the most pertinent information, I also looked through the different models of solar lights available to choose which ones would be suitable alternatives for LED and therefore would be worth discussing. There is quite a range of products out there, some being very sophisticated and as a result quite expensive, and others which are more simple and affordable. There are also differences in the intended purposes of the different models; some have been designed specifically for use in the developing world and are used by other charities or social enterprises and some have been designed to be used as outdoor lighting or for activities like camping and hiking. I felt it was important to not completely disregard the latter type of lantern as some of the models would still be useful to the communities in Peru and Nepal as they can sometimes be cheaper or easier to source in bulk.

Luminaidsunkingenergy and comfort

Example of solar lights on the market, including the integrated LuminAid model, the Sun King study lights and the Energy and Comfort model with all the attachments.

Towards the end of my second week and throughout the third week I focused on writing the report, using a rough outline of the structure to get started and filling in the details from the research I had and my own knowledge. I tried a few different layouts and methods of presenting the data so that it is as clear and easy to read as possible, but I have decided to focus on the formatting in the final week, once all of the content is finalised.

A few questions came up whilst I was comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the different models so I look forward to meeting with the trustees next week to clarify these points and to show them my progress so far, before finalising the report.

BNA: THE INTERNSHIP CONTINUES (2/3)

Hello again!

I’ve now reached the end of my second week with the British Neuroscience Association, and plan to take one week off before returning. I chose to schedule my internship in this way so I could maximise the number of survey responses, and it also gave me a chance to head back to London to see my friends (and also attend the infamous beer & cricket festival in my boyfriend’s village).

This week has really all been about sending off the surveys and reviewing the current marketing material. It sounds deceptively simple. As I had created surveys for three different demographics (undergrad, postgrad and potential associate members), I then had to build up an organised directory of “dissemination points”, or people/organisations that could distribute my survey for me. For example, as the BNA is based in both Bristol & Cardiff University, I decided to contact the neuroscience course directors (both undergrad and postgrad) and ask if they could send my survey to their students. I also emailed the offices of the various schools involved with neuroscience at the university, e.g. the School of Experimental Psychology, and the School of Clinical Sciences. I contacted relevant societies as well, and also posted in my own course’s Facebook page, with around 150 of my peers at Imperial. All in all, this involved a lot of emailing.

Finding potential associate members was harder. To elucidate, the BNA are planning to introduce a new membership category for “people with a genuine interest in neuroscience but who do not work in neuroscience in a professional capacity”. For the student surveys I could also draw on the database of current student members, which helped to bolster the numbers, but I couldn’t do this for associate members. Instead, I had to give some thought to what kind of organisations could reach this specific type of person. I ended up using social media, and contacting Pint of Science, Cafe Scientifique, WI, U3A etc. Most of the people I talked to were more than happy to post my survey on their website and Facebook page – everyone has been an intern at some point. I also utilised the BNA’s social media following by posting my survey on all of their social media outlets. At the time of writing, I currently have around 130 responses for each of the student surveys, and around 60 responses for the associate member survey: more than enough to do some solid analysis on when I return.

Surveys were created via Surveymonkey
Surveys were created via Surveymonkey.com

Alongside this, I was tasked with reviewing the current BNA marketing material. After I had given some ConCrit, I set about creating my own flyers etc. through Microsoft Publisher. I’m a big fan of art/design, so I was really happy to be given such a huge responsibility and creative freedom when designing.

That’s all for now – have a great week!

P.S. As I didn’t really take any photos during this week (I was mostly just office based), here’s a picture of one of the first medical drawings done by Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, who beautifully illustrated the arborisations of neurons.

Drawing by Cajal showing a section of the spinal cord
Drawing by Cajal showing a section of the spinal cord

<– LAST TIME | NEXT TIME –>

Eden Project – checkpoint (2 weeks in)

It is the 28th of July, 2016 and it has now been two weeks since I started my internship at the Eden Project. At the start of my first week I had a plan about working on the Nuclear and Geothermal research for the Masterfile and also to keep researching new and emerging technologies’ on the side.

Between the 12th of July and now a lot has happened. At the start of the second week I spent two days on the ‘Welcome week’ meant for new volunteers and employees. This was very useful as it gave me more information the amazing stories behind how Eden came to exist, about what Eden was trying to do as an educational charity and how they were going about doing this. This also helped me to become more familiar with the site and the different people that work in different departments around Eden. I was also very fortunate to be able to sit in on a meeting with Jo Elworthy, the Head of Interpretations and Augusta Grand, Eden’s Head of Policy, while they were discussing Eden’s proposed geothermal plant. This was also very insightful as me and a fellow intern, Emma, who was also at the meeting are supposed to be working on Eden’s geothermal story.

With regards to my research and my work on the Masterfile I have now completed the first draft of the Nuclear story and have worked on summarizing the information into a possible story-line for the exhibit. I separated my research into nuclear into the following sections: History of Nuclear, Nuclear power production process (Fission and Fusion), Challenges with Nuclear Power and Solutions to Nuclear Power. In the midst of these sections I included current worldwide data of energy productions, and other nuclear statistics predominantly from the International Atomic Agent’s website and reports. The story-line is the information that will be on the information boards and leaflets and whose goal is to make the general public interested in the topic and its issues. For my story-line of Nuclear Power, I decided to add a section on popular myths and misconceptions to dispel popular myths about nuclear power production and radioactivity in general. I then sent my draft to Jo for feedback.

I have since decided to take a break from Nuclear and work on the geothermal story especially since Jo, told us that this story will be of more importance to Eden. This is because of the fact that Eden is planning on building the UK’s first deep geothermal plant, and would like to inform the public about the geothermal story and get them interested in what Eden is trying to do and how it would potentially benefit them. The research for the geothermal story will be done by both me and Emma. I will gather research on the more technical aspects and the general background to geothermal power production, whereas she will be working on Eden’s link to geothermal energy and the story from their point of view. Essentially my part of the research will follow the same skeleton as the research I undertook for nuclear power. I have since completed the ‘History’ and ‘Geothermal power production’ sections and am now working on summarizing the pros and cons of using geothermal energy as a means to generate electricity.

Over the past two weeks I have learnt a tremendous amount. I ran into several problems, mainly with directing my research. I realized after speaking to my supervisor after a few days since I started on my nuclear research that I was going into detail in places that were not required. I have since learned the kind of material I should be looking towards by walking around site, looking at the kind of information they have on their current exhibits and speaking to my supervisors and other interns. Now, having started on geothermal energy, the research is going more smoothly as I now know what kind of information I should look for. The other problem I encountered was creating a story-line. This involves having to summarise all the research in a topic into easy to understand terms, to make it interesting and attention grabbing. I struggled with simplifying the nuclear research into something anyone would understand but in the end I just kept at it, and tried using my 15 year old sister to tell me if anything was too complicated. I have also started making daily targets that I ensure are complete before I leave for the day.

Finally, working in the office amongst all the other employees and seeing their interactions with each other has given me a very deep insight into how the work environment at a charity is. Everyone is enthusiastic about their job and cooperate with everyone else in the team to get the work done. Small things stood out to me such as the fact that whenever someone went to make tea, they asked everyone if they wanted one too. I got a chance to see this teamwork and enthusiasm to a great extent as this past week was the week where Eden was setting up their Dinosaurs exhibit. The compilation of months of research was being put onto an exhibit and all in one week. It was very inspiring to see how everyone in the office left on the last day to help out on site, with the setting up of the exhibit. It gives you a feeling of everyone enjoying their work and wanting to make it a success.

For the remaining weeks, I will finish up the Nuclear story and my part of the Geothermal story and hopefully finalise the whole story together with Emma, the other intern. I also, hope to actually start some research on new and emerging technologies. I have not yet had time to research this section even though it is of interest to me due to a lack of time especially since spent time going into too much detail at certain points.

To finish, here are some pictures of the beautiful Eden project that Emma and I took over the past two weeks, including the new dinosaur exhibit!

IMG-20160728-WA0003 WhatsApp-Image-20160728 DSC_8616 (1)

Weeks two and three at St. Anne’s: gaining trust

It’s nearing the end of my third week at St. Anne’s, so it’s definitely time for another blog post. Before we dive into the details, I thought it might be a good idea to clarify some of the jargon I’ll be using throughout my posts.

A ‘client’ or ‘service user’ is someone who has come to St. Anne’s for any kind of assistance, from help with housing or substance abuse problems, to just wanting a shower and a hot meal. St. Anne’s has many different clients, but my project is focused on those who are ‘vulnerably housed’. This term is a bit foggy; it covers just about everything from street homeless (what we tend to think of when we hear the word homeless) to someone living in a hostel, right the way through to people who actually have their own tenancy. You’ll soon pick it up!

Despite the fact that I’ve worked at St. Anne’s before (see my previous blog post) it still took some time to settle in again. For the first week, I heard a lot of “So what are you doing here, then?” “Do you work for a charity?” “Are you a support worker, or what?”. The team at St. Anne’s doesn’t usually change much, so a new face was something of a novelty for the service users.

After this initial novelty wore off, one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced during these first few weeks of the project is how to engage with the service users, and how to persuade them to chat to me about Spice. As you can imagine, some clients can be difficult at times, and often have a hard time trusting people they deem to be professionals (that includes me, apparently). It was my job to make them see that I wasn’t asking questions to be rude or critical, I was simply trying to find out more about Spice. Over the past three weeks, I’ve learnt (sometimes the hard way) how to put clients at ease, so I thought I’d share my top tips with you.

  1. Talk to services users as you would anyone else. People who are vulnerably housed are often cut off from the rest of society, they are used to being shunned and mistrusted. You need to show them that you respect them and their opinion, just like any other person. Be friendly, and don’t be frightened or too formal.
  2. Try to remember their name. Now, this seems pretty obvious, but I’ve found that it makes a huge difference to the service users at St. Anne’s. As I said before, the vulnerably housed often feel rejected by society and as a result can be quite defensive; making an effort to remember someone’s name lets them know that you’ve not just dismissed them because of their position.
  3. Let them be the expert. Compared to most of the services users I have spoken to, my knowledge of Spice (from its various effects to the price of a bag) is pretty rubbish. They are the experts, and it’s important that you treat them as such. Listen to what they say, it might sound odd or even silly to you but you’re not the one taking this drug, they are. I’ve found that this approach also helps to gain the trust of the service users; they spend a lot of time being on the receiving end of help or guidance (from doctors, social workers, etc.) so I think that they enjoy the chance to actually give their own opinions and advice.

So, using these basic ‘tools’ (if you like) I think I’ve managed to gain the trust of a lot of the clients. Many of them remember my name, and will say hello if they see me. It’s really nice to feel part of the community at St. Anne’s. In terms of my project, it’s helped me to engage with the service users and to get them to open up about their experiences with Spice. It’s a little too early to go into the details of my findings, but one thing in particular that has struck me is the sheer volume of service users that take Spice. I’d been told that it was very popular among the vulnerably housed by both the staff at St. Anne’s and associated health professionals, but I didn’t quite understand the scale of the problem until I witnessed it first-hand. Literally every single person I have asked in the last three weeks has taken Spice at least once.

The poster shown below is displayed in the reception area of St. Anne’s; I walk past it every day. Worryingly, during my time here I have spoken to clients  and staff who have experienced (or witnessed someone else experiencing) all of the listed effects of so-called ‘legal highs’. It’s not pleasant to talk about, but hopefully my project will play a small part in raising the public’s awareness of the dangers of Spice.

 

 

St John Ambulance – Third Week

Time has flown by and it’s hard to believe it’s nearly the end of the penultimate week! It’s been a promising week with significant progress having been made:

  • I finished extracting the relevant data from DIPS for the fifth and final district within South West Region and plotted the graphs to present this. There is a lot of data that I’ve collated, so I need to consider how best to present my results when I start to write my report.
  • The survey I created has been distributed via the South West Region mailing list with great results. After the slow response initially, I’ve now had over 100 responses, which is much more than I had anticipated!
  • I’ve worked through each of the surveys to pick out the comments/improvements that volunteers would like to receive in their training and this will be included in my final report. It’s really interesting getting the perspective of other volunteers from all areas of the region as it highlights specific areas of the region where more focussed training on a particular topic could be implemented. It also shows what’s going well already, but also what more could potentially be done for volunteers.
  • I’ve had a few more training programmes back from unit managers across the region, although this is still fewer than I would have liked. However, the training programmes I have got are really useful and again it’s interesting to see the similarities but also the differences between the training delivered to volunteers across the South West Region.
  • I’ve also kindly been given specific injury data for 3 major running events held in Central District (Bristol 10k, Bath Half Marathon and Bristol-Bath Marathon). It was intriguing to see the nature of the injuries that St John Ambulance treated and as a result led to me researching further information about the most common injuries, not only to further my first aid/medical knowledge but also to create a training presentation specific to running injuries. Having spoken to some current volunteers and after viewing the online training folder, it was apparent that currently there isn’t a bank/source with resources that units can access to deliver first aid teaching. Therefore, I’ve put together a presentation with the most commonly treated running injuries, with the long-term vision that further presentations/resources may be put together into a general resource bank that anyone can access to further their training. I feel the running injuries presentation may be useful to a wide range of units, as having looked through the duties covered throughout 2015, running events are covered all over the region so the information would be useful and applicable to volunteers out on duty.
  • I’ve also met up with both my project supervisors to update them on my progress so far. They’ve also been able to get me specific injury data for the ‘Mid-Devon Show’, and having looked through the injuries treated, it highlights the importance of first aid training with respect to bites, stings and allergies as these accounted for over a third (36%) of the patients treated. I’ll be meeting with them again this afternoon hopefully to discuss the final report.

Heading into the final week, my focus will be on writing the report and presenting my findings. I will also look to put forward suggestions for training development as per the survey responses.

 

 

Touchdown in Paignton

Yesterday, following a fairly long (but mostly hassle-free) trip from my home in South London to the sunny seaside town of Paignton, I woke up early to start my internship training. The town, as per its namesake, is home to the Paignton Zoo & Environmental park as well as the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust. Established in 1959, the Trust operates in locations all over the UK, working for both domestic and international conservation goals. My two days of training was incredibly hectic and involved meeting a lot of new people alongside being told about a myriad of different aspects to the research project I will be joining in on.

 

DSC_0014
A quick photograph I snuck in between collecting foodstuff and faecal scoring in the enclosure with the Emperor tamarins… I’m hoping to learn a lot more about wildlife photography while I’m here

 

To sum up what I’ll be doing as simply as I can:

The project I’m working on was established around a year ago and aims to investigate the possible effects of two different probiotics on the general wellbeing of a number of primate species held at the zoo. The question being answered is essentially as follows: can the known health benefits of these microorganisms in humans also be identified for other types of non-human primates (NHPs)? In the event that positive results are found, future breeding/ conservations programmes could begin to confidently incorporate probiotics into the set diets of captive NHPs in order to improve their general wellbeing as well as simply survivorship. The specific aspect of this project I will be taking over will involve making up and weighing different feeds for ten species of primates each morning. Then, at the start of the next day, I will collect leftover food to calculate how much has been eaten before completing faecal scoring to analyse their general health. This will be partnered with extended periods of behavioural observations using ethograms to hopefully make conclusions about if these probiotics could affect the activity of these primates in any meaningful way. Positive results obtained here will revolve around increased levels of activity and feeding behaviours promoted by the presence of these probiotics.

Small food 1
Guess which one food item here the primates don’t actually eat… believe it or not, it’s the banana
Small food 2
Stopwatch and record sheet for food measurements

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As complex – and ever-so-slightly overwhelming – as the first two days of training were, I’m very excited to keep getting more and more involved in the project and possibly even get started on some more independent work during downtimes. In addition to research I’m hoping to use the fantastic amount of access I’ll have to these animals to practice some photography and video skills when possible.

As for the near future (later this week), I will be conducting some inter-rater reliability testing. Essentially, I will sit in for long observation periods alongside the project leader and see if our behavioural scoring systems are statistically similar. This should be a good way for me to practice my observational skills under supervision whilst simultaneously completing some important scientific work which will help in the final stages of the study (since these tests can allow conclusions to be made on the accuracy of results collected during observations).

 

Fingers crossed the sun stays out until the weekend!

Week 1 at Full Fact.

My internship is at Full Fact, the UK’s independent factchecking organisation. Ahead of this year’s referendum, they worked with ITV and Sky News to correct factual errors made in live debates, and they have asked for and got corrections in all the national newspapers. They play an ever-growing role in the effort to hold the media and politicians accountable to their claims.

Many assertions made in public debate come up again and again, they call them “zombie claims” at Full Fact (because they just don’t die). Claims like ‘poverty increased in the past six months’ or ‘unemployment decreased last year’. Factcheckers spend valuable time finding and interpreting government data for poverty or unemployment every time new datasets are released. In order for Full Fact to spend more time getting into deeper questions, and for journalists to have faster access to the truth, the charity is aiming to automate the most repetitive parts of their work.

This is what I’m working on: automated factchecking. The code I write will hopefully lead to the first ever factcheck carried out by Full Fact with a computer program. My project has quickly taken shape, and is divided into two parts. The first is natural language processing (NLP), that interprets, for example, Jeremy Corbyn’s claim at Prime Minister’s Questions that more people than ever live on the streets. The second does the statistical work, checking the claim against government data for homelessness.

So far I have been using NLP and discovered that the problems involved in teaching a computer how to read are both interesting to solve, and also a massive challenge. Sentences are constructed with linguistic rules, but they are no way near as logical as  instructions a computer understands. Every rule that I come up with that can interpret text seems to require a hundred exceptions.

More broadly, the office experience is great. Having been provided with a good starting point, I am working on the code itself on my own. I am even helping shape what direction to take it in, so there is a certain amount of responsibility I have never felt before in the workplace. I am doing this because I like politics and this is something that can make a difference to democracy. I love having a TV on the wall showing the BBC news channel, and receiving emails with information on the day’s political happenings! To top it off, sunny lunchtimes with a falafel wrap in Gray’s Inn Gardens are beautiful.

 

 

The End of My Time at PureLeapfrog

It is always amazing to seat at the end of a journey and look back at the road you have traveled. This four weeks have blazed by and I am now left to reflect on my time at PureLeapfrog.

When I started this internship, I had many preconceptions of what working in a formal setting would be like and indeed a lot of misgivings surrounding the current political climate that Britain surrounds itself in.

I had imagined that the biggest pain points of working would be related to project planning, and execution but I discovered more importantly that building the proper environment and team spirit may be the single biggest challenge of a CEO running a company. Furthermore, that I as worker would have to contend with some give and take. Nonetheless, before we move on to the ideas  that I have come to it is good to take a look at the work that I have done.

When I started I was giving a mission to develop a conceptual map of the community energy landscape. The beginning was like this:

IMG_0197

Unreadable scribbling

 

 

Unreadable scribbling

After consulting with my CEO Alex Germanis, I was able to refine my ideas and arrived at the following map:

Inter

On further inputs from a Master student in Sustainable energy, I was able to construct the final map that best illustrates the key plays, inputs, and processes of this landscape:

Final

This process was fruitful as I developed new graphic and design skills, I was able to research and synthesize community energy, and I learn how to interact with superiors.

Nonetheless, in the midst of all this, I have come to understand that subordination with an organization created by the passion and perseverance of others is not me. The truly challenging work that CEO Alex and the team does is invaluable to the British community now and in future however as I chart my road in future I too want to enjoy the pleasure of not only birthing ideas but also being able to execute on them in a sustainable way and successfully.

Within the uncertainty of the short term political situation in the UK as well as the long term uncertainty surrounding such things as AI, Climate Change, and demographic imbalance there is no better time to strike for the fences and become a creator. The world we live in is non-linear and the best toolkit to counter that is the resilience to implement on perceived opportunities even in conditions of extreme uncertainty.

As I move forward from PureLeapfrog, I can only wish them the best and hope that they will thrive even under the circumstances that we find ourselves in. Furthermore, I would like to thank CEO Alex, and the team for all the support that they have provide and all the unsolicited advice and conversation that they have provided.

To any student Imperial student reading this, I would highly recommend the charity insights program.

Nothing beats the experience of work for a small team with strong passions with the support of the Charity insight team including Barnaby and Jessica.

Good luck.

Second week at PureLeapfrog

I am more than half-way through this four week journey and it seems that time is escaping. So much of consequence has occurred between the last blog post and now.

In terms of project, I have learned new skills mainly to do with designing and synthesizing new ideas. The map (see image) that I was tasked with constructing is now nearing it’s finishing touches and I am glad for the opportunity to have been part of a team.

IMG_0197

The initial scribbling of the map.

 

After watching the day to day ebb and flow of the office, it has become more apparent that it is the people that surround you that matter to a much greater extent than any idea ever could. The sense of camaderie and togetherness in pursuing our goals and vision is trying fascinating and it is this feeling that I will seek in future.

Speaking of the future, where do I see myself next year, or in three, or five years? The United Kingdom was to become my new home, where I would “make my dent in the universe”, now it seems the country is headed inextricably towards uncertainty, pessimism and division. My future has become a whole lot more uncertain since the first blog post.

My CEO Alex, as well as my Horizon’s mentor Martin have been an important source of comfort and groundedness in this new up in the air world. Alex has told me not to worry too much aas he figures that for the most part things will continue as they always have. Meanwhile Martin gave me some sanguine advice about the tyranny that is our own mind. How crisis often has a way of starting in the mind and propagating through our bodies and into the wider world. He told me that solutions therefore have to come from within as we seek the optimism and excitement within the world no matter the events of the past weeks, months, or years. I hope that I can embody that spirit.