Category: Charity Insights 2016

St John Ambulance – Second Week

Hello again from another sunny day in Bristol.

The online platform DIPS is temporarily down, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide an update on my project over the past week. This week I have continued where I left off on Friday, with good progress having been made. I have extracted the data from DIPS for four of the five districts in the South West Region and entered it into my spreadsheet allowing for more graphs to be plotted/drawn. I am currently working on extracting the data for the final district and will have this all done by tomorrow (hopefully DIPS will be back up and running soon!). During the week I have also created a survey (by district) for all volunteers in South West Region. The main aim of this survey is to gain the volunteers’ perspectives of the first aid training they receive and where they feel it can be improved (if at all). So far I’ve only had 10 responses, but hopefully the link is going to be published in the regional newsletter so that will lead to greater coverage and an increased number of responses! I am aiming to be able to analyse the results of the survey next week as I start to pull the results together for my final report. I have also contacted the unit managers within each district to ask for their unit training programmes. I have had a couple of training programmes through so far, and am hoping to receive some more in the coming days, which will allow me to then compare the first aid training that volunteers receive to the first aid they have actually had to provide whilst out on duties.

After spending the whole week in the office, you’d think I’d take a break from St John related activity, however, that was not the case. Over the weekend Bristol hosted it’s 35th annual Harbour Festival and St John Ambulance were at the forefront providing first aid treatment for the thousands of visitors that came to enjoy the Harbourside at it’s best. In between responding to calls, I met volunteers from across the region and this was a great way to develop my project! I was able to explain my project and its aims to some of the unit managers out on duty but also speak to some members of the clinical and assurance team. This was particularly useful, as subsequently, I have been able to obtain data for all of the events covered by South West Region in 2015 with an overview of the types of injuries that occurred, the treatment provided and information about the discharge of patients following treatment. Aside from furthering my project, I did also develop my first aid and medical knowledge; learning about the different types of skin tear, the importance of taking a history (particularly with head injury patients) and dealing with some less cooperative patients.

I also met my project supervisor whilst out on duty at the Harbour Festival and will be meeting him tomorrow to go over the project so far and discuss further plans for the next couple of weeks!

My final week at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

Having completed the British 10k on Sunday, my final week at the UKSCF started by discussing the run and how it had gone with my colleagues. However, before long I was back to work.

I began the week by responding to queries that had been sent into the charity by individuals enquiring about places on clinical trials. I had to advise them on the costs and benefits of different clinical trials, as well as guide them towards useful tools to research and understand the implications of taking part in a clinical trial. This exposed me to some of the people that the charity is trying to help by funding research, and it served me as motivation to imagine the situation that they must be in and the fact that we must be somewhat of a final hope.

For two days, I visited a lab researching stem cell treatment of spinal cord injury at UCL’s Institute of Neurology. I was welcomed by the team and presented their project in detail. They explained to me their successful clinical trial, which led to a paralysed man regaining motor and sensory function, as well as their new aims in perfecting the technique for further trials. I was also taken for a tour of the lab (including the animal testing zone) and given demonstrations of the specific techniques they use for the project. This experience gave me a real, hands-on insight into where exactly the charity’s money goes when it funds research groups.

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UCL’s Institute of Neurology – home to the spinal cord injury project funded by the UKSCF

Having returned to the office, I began planning and designing the charity’s newsletter. This involved deciding on relevant articles and presenting them in a format that was easy on the eye. I particularly enjoyed this due to it allowing me to be more creative. In addition, I am helping with the redevelopment of the charity’s website, which we feel is in need of improvement.

Since finishing my Charity Insights internship:

Although my internship at the UK Stem Cell Foundation has finished, I will in fact continued working for the charity in a temporary position. I am very happy to have the opportunity to continue the work that I started during my internship. In particular, I hope to use the database of contacts that I developed during the early stages of my internship, as the opening of the Centre of Regenerative Medicine was unfortunately delayed. Having the opportunity to work in areas such as website design and the production of the newsletter is also a great way to leave a lasting mark at the charity before I have to leave. I am very thankful to the team at UKSCF for their help and support, and for giving me the opportunities and level of responsibility that they did.

The Charity Insights programme has given me the opportunity to gain experience in a commercial environment (which I lacked before now), the platform to apply the skills and knowledge that I have gained during my time at Imperial and prepared me for the big decisions coming my way over the next year or so. Working for a charity is of course rewarding, as you feel you are making a difference and genuinely helping people (particularly at a charity such as UKSCF where the treatments they help to develop will change lives). However, it is also a true business setting and relies on everyone giving 100% and performing their work as efficiently as possible to ensure that as much of the money raised as possible is going to where it is needed. For these reasons, I believe that it has prepared me very well for applying for jobs in whichever area I decide I would like to go into – quite possibly a charity. So finally, I would definitely recommend the programme to anyone thinking about it in the coming years, and I thank Imperial and the careers team for this opportunity.

What I have learned:

  • Communication skills – especially in terms of addressing people’s queries by letter.
  • Creativity and design.
  • Article writing.
  • Lab skills/ research procedure.
  • Application of stem cell research.

 

Settling in at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

Weeks 2 and 3:

My second week began much the same as my first finished – I continued to produce a database of contacts, which we could contact to help us with the opening of a Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Sport and Trauma. I extended the database from sports clubs, brands and bloggers to include sportsmen and women who had retired due to injury and startup companies to target for a corporate partnership. Having completed research for all of the charity groups that I had been assigned, I compiled a list of the top 10 male and female sports stars that I believed we should target using criteria such as sport played, injury history and current charity links.

In addition to research, I began work on a concept for a fundraising/ public awareness campaign. I was allowed to use my passion for sport, and football in particular, to devise a challenge for school, university and sports clubs to attempt. I enjoyed this as I was able to be creative and to discuss different ideas for the challenge with Hugh. Having narrowed down our ideas to 3, I went about researching the possibility specific merchandise for the campaign for example UK Stem Cell Foundation footballs and football shirts for competitors. This involved producing a design for both a ball and t shirt (below), and taking this to suppliers to obtain quotes.

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T-shirt design for the football challenge fundraiser
The campaign is still a work in progress and we are hoping to film a ‘pilot’ video to take to the charity’s ambassadors and trustees in the coming weeks, with the aim of taking the challenge to professional sports clubs to increase excitement before releasing it into schools/ universities.

I have also produced 1-page brochures for the Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Sport and Trauma, corporate partnership proposals and the charity in general. This has involved taking the most important and relevant information from the website and longer brochures, and fitting it onto 1 sheet of paper, as well as understanding the target of these different pieces of media for example sportsmen/ women, potential donors and corporate partners. In addition, I produced a design for a webpage to provide individuals with more information about running the London Marathon in aid of the UKSCF. Again, I have enjoyed the opportunity to be creative with these tasks.

Alongside this, I agreed to help fundraise for the charity by taking on a personal challenge. A spare place was available to run for the charity at the Vitality British 10k in London, July 10th. Despite the lack of time to train, I signed up and completed it in a time of 48:39, which I was quite happy with. More importantly, I have raised over £400 for the charity so far and am hoping to reach £500 in the coming weeks.

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Finisher’s medal for the Vitality British 10k

Skills that I have learned:

  • Approaching and negotiating with suppliers
  • Selection of key information
  • Creativity
  • Identification of target clients and how to approach them
  • Fundraising
  • Time-management

Getting started at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

My first day:

I arrived at the rather impressive Royal Institute of Great Britain ready to begin work at the UK Stem Cell Foundation. I entered the building where I met my supervisor, Hugh. He gave me a brief induction and tour of the building, including the theatre where so many major scientific discoveries have been announced.

Royal Institute of Great Britain, London
Royal Institute of Great Britain, London

With the welcome over, we began discussing my role at the charity in more detail and the plan of action for my first week: RESEARCH. I was to build a network of sportsmen and women, sports club, sports brands and sports bloggers to contact about becoming involved with raising public awareness of the UKSCF. I got straight to work, doing my best to make a good early impression with my new boss.

Rest of the week:

Research can be quite frustrating and a little tedious, however the long hours of staring at a computer screen were broken up with interesting conversations with Hugh. When lunch comes around I am most happy to get the chance to stretch my legs and I go to explore the area around the office.

I have enjoyed my first week at the UK Stem Cell Foundation and I look forward to taking the research I have done, and hopefully convert these contacts into ambassadors and donors (of their time, not necessarily money) for the charity. I believe I have successfully put together a database of useful contacts, which we will begin to make contact with in the coming weeks. I have also been identifying interesting and discussion-provoking stem cell news to post on social media in order to increase interest in the general public. Finally, we have discussed my work for the coming weeks, which includes designing a fundraising and public awareness campaign for a Centre in Regenerative Medicine for Sport and Trauma, which I am excited to get started on.

Skills that I have learnt this week:

  • Importance of patience and calmness during research
  • Effective research
  • Office/ business etiquette

When you get the timing just right….

I picked the best month to do my internship at Anthony Nolan. (A charity that saves the lives of people with blood cancer or blood disorders). I have now started my third week and last Friday was the annual staff picnic. This is a day where the whole charity comes together (minus vital staff required to keep the charity running) to look at what has been happening over the past year and what the goals are for the coming one. This lead to a gathering of around 300 people in the great hall of London Metropolitan University.

The morning started off with a speech from the CEO. She was very uplifting about what has been achieved over the last year, such as the charity being in the Sunday Times Top 100 not-for-profits to work for and achieving a one-star accreditation in the Sunday Times Best Companies annual ranking. She also was very positive with the goals for the future, ultimately a three-star accreditation and a higher rank.

In the course of the morning there was also a speech from a transplant recipient. Her story really brought home the reason why what Anthony Nolan does is so amazing. Without the bone marrow register she would not have been up there giving that speech.

There was also a Q&A with the Senior management team with questions that ranged from the light-hearted ‘What did you want to be when you grew up?’ to ‘How is Brexit going to impact the company?’. Then there was a chance for all of the different departments to showcase what it is that they do. Most used comedic videos to achieve this, such as filming from a camera strapped to the back of a dog and making it into a silent film. This was great and it showed me that despite the serious work that they do they sure know how to have fun.

After all this was done everybody migrated to Hampstead Heath to have a picnic. Despite having to queue for 20 minutes to get my sandwiches this was a great opportunity to get to know my co-workers a little better and was a very enjoyable experience. If you are reading this blog because you are thinking of doing charity insights I cannot recommend highly enough taking opportunities to socialise as knowing your colleagues makes the whole experience more enjoyable and far less scary.
Hampstead Heath 2

End of the internship at London Wetland Centre.

My internship at London Wetland Centre has finished. It has been great 4 weeks. I have done all the fieldwork designed by myself and I have completed my report for WWT. I marked all the sites where different species of ladybirds were spotted on the map of LWC and included it in my report. The main findings from my quantitative measurements are as follows:

  • Ladybird community at LWC is dominated by harlequin ladybird – Harmonia axyridis, which comprises 70% of all tree-living ladybirds at LWC.
  • There is a positive correlation between the density of aphids on the tree and the abundance and diversity of ladybirds living on the tree.
  • Spiders and mites (known together as Arachnids) presence was found to have no influence on ladybird prevalence.
  • Similarly, ants showed no or very weak correlation with prevalence of different ladybird species.

ladybirdgraphSuch dominance of harlequin ladybirds is pretty amazing considering that this species was firstly noted in England in 2004. It took it only a decade to outcompete native UK ladybirds and become the most common species, which is why it draws attention of scientists and it has been extensively studied over the last couple of years.

As this is my last post, it is time to reflect upon the benefits I gained from Charity Insights. This project was a fantastic opportunity to step into a completely new environment. I met some interesting people and I got a chance to work in the office for the first time in my life. I used to cooperate with nongovernmental organisations in the past as a volunteer, but it was never a regular work on a daily basis. Thanks to this project I could get a good insight into the way a conservation charity is run. I was working under supervision, but at the same time I was to some extent independent and this independence was important, because it gave me a lot of freedom in terms of my style of work. On the other hand, having this independence required making decisions by myself and hence taking full responsibility for my actions and being self-disciplined. Being in charge of my own project gave me a lot of self-confidence, which will certainly help in my future career no matter what path I choose in the end.

In order to complete my project I could finally use the skills that I gained throughout my degree like maintaining scientific rigour while desigigning and performing the experiment, doing statistical analysis of data, writing scientific report in the real-life situation. The point of all the effort that I put into this project was not to get a good grade, but to collect information that are useful to somebody and may be used in their future work. I must admit that it was very satisfying.

I have commented about how great LWC is in my previous posts, so I am not going to repeat myself. But here are some photos just to emphasise what a nice place London Wetland Centre is.

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BNA: THE INTERNSHIP BEGINS (1/3)

Hello! I’m Anna, an incoming third year Biologist.

Firstly, let me introduce you to the charity I have chosen to work with. The British Neuroscience Association (BNA) is the leading neuroscience charitable organisation in the UK, and functions to bring together researchers, organisations and individuals which are involved with, or have an interest in, neuroscience. It’s a charity chiefly run for and by scientists and thus must have specifically tailored marketing strategies to appeal to such a niche demographic – which is what first drew my attention to BNA.

The beginning of my internship did not start well. I woke up on Monday morning feeling absolutely awful, and made it halfway down the road before I gave in and had to call in sick. My supervisor was really lovely about it, and agreed that we’d start on Tuesday, in Cardiff, instead. As I was based in Bristol, two trains were required to reach the BNA office in Cardiff – the first of which was (typically) majorly delayed and the second of which I consequently missed. I therefore ended up starting my internship a day late and literally late… not a great beginning, I think you’d agree.

Regardless, as soon as I managed to actually begin I found myself really enjoying the project. After discussing with my supervisor, we identified a couple of project niches: how to increase undergraduate membership (and potentially set up some kind of student representative scheme), and how to effectively market the new membership category, associate membership.

I was given quite a lot of freedom to brainstorm this, and was also afforded the opportunity to speak to leading neuroscientists, who were serving on the BNA committee. Not only could I ask people who started off with the same credentials as myself (a degree in Biology) about how they informed their career paths, but also talk to experts who shared my scientific interest. After listening to their thoughts on the reality of carrying out my project, I began to plan day-by-day what I would actually be doing.

I spent Wednesday in Bristol, and Thursday in Brasenose College, Oxford, where I talked to Prof. John Jefferys about my plans for the next few weeks. We had lunch in the Brasenose senior common room (think wood panelling, huge fireplaces and unbelievable portraits), and afterwards took a brief look around the Ashmolean. It was a lovely day – I had a lot of fun, and it was great to be able to talk with such an interesting individual!

Brasenose College I
Brasenose College II

On Friday, I was lucky enough to sit in on a lab meeting between Neuroscience postdocs at Bristol University. They were interested in how natural circadian rhythms of stress hormones like corticosterone could be mimicked to improve the side effects of prescribed steroids, using rats as a model animal (if you’re interested, here’s a bit of background). Everyone was really friendly and happy to discuss their data with me; hopefully at some point I can go down to the labs and actually see some of their research.

Luckily I arrived just in time for the Bristol Harbour Festival on the weekend, which was a great chance to explore the city and eat some awesome food. I also looked around Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, where I got to see Rembrandt’s Self-portrait at the age of 63, one of the last paintings he did before his death.

London National Gallery Next 20 09 Rembrandt - Self Portrait at the Age of 63
Self Portrait at the Age of 63

To conclude: I’ve had a great introduction to my internship and am really excited to continue with my project next week…

–> NEXT TIME

Eden Project Internship – First Day

The Eden Project mostly known as a popular visitor attraction in beautiful Cornwall. It is famous for having the largest captive rainforest its Rainforest Biome and also for it’s Mediterranean Biome. Additionally, they have the popular Eden Sessions during summer, which are concerts held at its main stage. However, mainly Eden is an educational charity that aims to reconnect people with the natural world and with each other. They do this by using leaflets, informational boards and interactive exhibits around the site.

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The project I am involved with at the Eden Project is called ‘Life Givers’ and it aims to communicate the worlds’ and in particular Eden’s energy story using a trail of sculptures and other art-based exhibits. These exhibits will show the range of ways people harness energy and the steps taken towards a carbon-neutral world. The end result will be a physical trail along Eden’s Zigzag pathway with the exhibits serving as checkpoints. At each exhibit there will be information on boards to explain the nature of the exhibit, with further information in a trail guide which will be available at the start of the trail.

My main role in the project will be to work with the interpretations team in collecting all the necessary information that will eventually be condensed onto the boards and the trail guide as a story line. The research conducted will be collected into a ‘Masterfile’; a scientific document which will serve as the backbone for the whole project. This will need to be properly referenced and coherent so that it can be understood by partners of the project and other friends of Eden and also for gaining the correct permissions for material printed for the general public.

12th July 2016, was my first day as an intern at the Eden Project. I met up with Sarah Peake my contact and supervisor at Eden at 10am, at the Foundation Building of Eden. On meeting Sarah, who was so friendly I was immediately put at ease. I was taken to where my desk will be, and was briefly introduced to fellow interpreters and other teams working at Eden. I was then given a tour around the building. Later, we sat down in the staff room dining area and discussed the project. I was given a folder which included a draft proposal for the Masterfile, a content research brief and  an ‘Eden Internship Objectives’ questionnaire which will act as a personal guide to what I should be doing at each stage of my internship. I was then taken to be given an Eden Badge(yay!) which included a photograph(not so yay) and was then given time to read through the proposal for the Masterfile so that I could clarify any doubts I had over lunch.

For lunch we were joined by Jo Elworthy, who is the Director of Interpretations and a fellow intern who is also working on the Life Givers project. After lunch, Jo went over the proposal in more detail – as she was the one that actually wrote the proposal – and explained each section in detail. We were also treated to a few lovely and unbelievable stories about Jo, her life and how she got involved with Eden. After lunch, I was shown around the Eden site and the easiest ways to get to the Foundation building from the site.

After returning to the Foundation building, I set to work with the draft of the Masterfile. Sarah then signed me up for a Welcome Week programme the following week and I was told that I could work on any area that I would like to despite initially being proposed the energy story of Eden- the relationship with Eden and their energy provider Good Energy. After separating the proposal into sections to organise my thoughts and adding a few notes of my own, I decided to start working on the Nuclear and Geothermal story of Eden and then venture onto the story with Good Energy. I decided to also try do some work on the new and emerging technologies with respect to energy.

For the following weeks, I hope to finish both the Nuclear and Geothermal Masterfile entries. This will involve sections for each including its history, the process, any challenges and their solutions if any. However, I believe the emerging technologies section will take longer as it will involve more reading than the other sections as the range will be wider. This I plan on keeping up throughout my stay at Eden, as it depends on how many articles I read and if I come across any new developments.

Internship with LED: First Week

I have completed my first week of my internship with the charity Light Education Development (LED) and it has been an interesting experience so far. Although I have been given a direction for the project, I also have the opportunity to be independent and to choose my focus and my approach. My project is related to the work the charity does providing solar lights to families in Peru and Nepal with no access to electricity. I am researching the different lamps on the market and evaluating their suitability for the charity’s needs. Beyond this, the content of the report is at my discretion; how scientific to make it, how many products to consider, how to compose the layout. I have been impressed by the number of products on the market and I’ve enjoyed learning about innovative new technologies and what to expect from the future of solar energy.

LED provides solar lights to families in these areas as they have no access to electricity, meaning that once the sun goes down life effectively stops. Providing a source of light means children can complete their homework and other tasks after dark, meaning they can progress with their education and ultimately escape from the poverty trap.

Below are images courtesy of LED (https://lighteducationdevelopment.org/) showing the solar lights they currently use.

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© Light Education Development

It was great to touch base with my supervisor to ensure my research was along the right lines and also to share some of my preliminary findings. As well as recommending a particular solar light unit that could be used I will also be investigating different avenues to consider in terms of collaborating with manufacturers or other charities to try and provide as many as many lights as possible. If I have time I would also like to consider this in terms of the work the charity does relating to the provision of education and healthcare in these villages.

So far I have had a great experience and I look forward to continuing on this project and producing a report that benefits the charity and the people who they help.

 

Farewell to Future Frontiers

The final week has been quite hectic. After finally getting hold of adobe acrobat, a software which allows you to make interactive PDFs, I have gone back to working on…

Task 1: Academic Plan

Getting to grips with the software was hard. But, generally, most of the problems I was having, others had also had, so Google could help me out. (Tech aside: Acrobat allows you to add javascript to the PDF, but it’s a bit weird getting your head around how it works).

What I ended up creating are PDFs, one for each year group, which allow students to see what grades they need to achieve at the end of each school year in order to be on track for their chosen career. Here’s how it works for year sevens. 2

Pupils enter their name and choose an industry and career from the drop down menu, as shown above. 

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They then press the orange ‘set’ button which means that the career now shows up in bold. Next, they select which route they plan to take to get there by selecting the relevant buttons on the right. 

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Pressing the ‘Add Image’ button takes them to this screen.

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Students then click within the box and choose any image they like from the file system.

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Now they move on to setting their grades using this section of the PDF.

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They choose the relevant grade format that their school uses.

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And fill in the grades as appropriate.

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After pressing ‘Set Changes’ the document automatically fills to show what grades they need. If they need higher GCSE grades for their desired career, they can increase these using the black arrows to the right.

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The students end up with a document like this, which is good for many things. Notably;

  • The school can use them to display the work of Future Frontiers in the school .
  • Pupils can use them as a guide to reaching their top career.
  • Future Frontiers can use them to assess the success of the program.

Going Forwards

This is a great way of ensuring a long lasting impact of Future Frontiers on the pupils with which they work. A future use for these is using them as some form of certificate in the graduation ceremony at the end of the program.

Task 2: Coach Quiz

This has a lot more loose ends to tie up. Firstly, I have to put it online so that Future Frontiers can access it, and then there are a few features I’d like to add. At the moment, it isn’t that much better than something like survey monkey, and in fact something like this would maybe be better in that the person issuing the quiz receives more tracking information of who has done the quiz and also can add and remove questions quite easily. The main advantage of the quiz I made is that it’s a bit more professional to have one personal to the organisation!

So, I’d like to improve the quiz by adding in these features and then also making the training more extensive, by adding more content, videos and perhaps even different training modules.

What else?

Something else Future Frontiers would like is a very simple app to be able to ask the pupils for feedback on each session so that they can ensure their programs are making an impact. The app may also have other functionalities such as reminding the pupils of the targets they set themselves. This is something I would quite like to work on with them, time permitting.

Overall

I have rally enjoyed my time working with this charity and have learnt a lot about technology, and also about how busy working in a new charity is! I hope my help has proved useful and that I will be able to work with them in the future. Thank you, Charity Insights, for giving me this awesome opportunity.