Category: Uncategorized

Filmings and Finales

So much to catch up on this blog, where to to begin, probably where I left off, week of 18th Sept.

When I didn’t think there could be more variety, lo and behold, there it was. After starting off the week continuing some policy work on the EU and some more video project work, I helped supervise a teacher training event the RAS was holding as part of ESERO’s “Misson X” programme. Learning about the Education & Outreach side to the society was really interesting.

I also attended a filming for a new episode of Objectivity, a youtube series focussed on antique objects, whilst also doing some behind the scenes research for it.

Also in my last week, I started rounding up some of the longer projects I had been working on.

  • Monday was recording the videocast project I had been working on for the library and also editing the video.
  • Tuesday I handed off the EU policy work that I had been working on the entire time, (which apparently might be handed around the organisation as an information booklet)
  • Tuesday and Wednesday, we’ve had the Prince’s Trust here performing a filming project, which I have been assisting in multiple ways such a
    • Researching various instruments such as Sutton Quadrants and Nocturnals to able to explain how they operated
    • Being interviewed on physics and astronomy, answering questions given by the public on what it would be like to visit various bodies

Round-up :

I’ve massively enjoyed working at the Royal Astronomical Society and would recommend working there or just visiting generally. A huge thanks to everyone there for hosting my placement.

Don’t forget: SPACE IS AWESOME

Richard Out!

Finishing up

Following my last post, I’ve finished building all of the interactive fly throughs, and added the rest of the content to the website. Now all that is left to do is change the DNS configuration to point the domain at the new server. I will be explaining how to use wordpress to the church committee, and following up any questions they may have. I will be staying in contact with the church, so that I can help if there are any technical issues. I will also be explaining how to use instagram, so that they can be cool and trendy.

 

I’m waiting on the church of england technical proposal document, as it isn’t yet at the stage for me to add the information about WiFi and projector installations. This means that for now, there isn’t anything else for me to do for the church, and thus concludes the summer internship. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time, learned CSS, HTML, basic javascript, and reinforced my understanding of web server setups. I’ve also managed to add a new video to my YouTube channel and flew my drone indoors for the first time ever.

 

I’m fairly sure that I am the first person to ever make an interactive drone video. I’ve spent a good while searching the internet for other examples, and can’t find anything at all. I’m hoping that other people will see my work, and that I may be able to pick up some jobs building similar web apps in the future. Thanks Imperial for funding me to do such an exciting and useful project.

Going the extra mile

To say that my time at Clarity was boring and that I had nothing to do, would be a blatant lie. With the looming deadline for the release of the new product line hanging above us, we were constantly creating, constantly reformulating and improving, in order to provide Clarity’s customers with the best products. We were so busy with this work that unfortunately my project on the removal of triclosan from the hand washes was halted. However, the company saw the importance of the project that I was meant to undertake and gave me the opportunity to carry on with them for another four weeks, to focus solely on improving their antibacterial hand washes.
Through this experience I have realised that when it comes to cosmetics, a lot of the work done is mostly trial and error. For example, say you had a viscosity issue when it came to your products; you would conduct some research or call a chemical supplier to obtain a chemical that might solve the issue and would make a sample of your desired product with the acquired chemical at a recommended concentration; If this works you’ve solved your viscosity issue. If not, you would adjust the concentrations of the additional chemical or find another alternative. Such circumstances truly do try your patience, and at times you feel like forgetting about the product and moving on to the next one, but nothing can beat the satisfaction you feel when you persevere and fix the issue.

Macmillan Weeks 6-8

Now about halfway through my internship, my timetable and work was becoming more regular. Like previously mentioned, Macmillan offer training courses to their staff, which interns can join too if we email a week before – so I’ve been making a note of when to email to try and get a place. Luckily I managed to get a place on Writing for Macmillan, which was really interesting as it investigated the approach for how the charity writes and portrays itself to others. Similarly, I had an induction with someone from the Cancer Information Development team which I found very useful to discover how the charity utilises the information it has to make it as effective as possible. In line with my aspiration to go into Science Communication, it was great to try and understand the importance of target audience and the average reading age when writing.

With respect to the project I’ve been working on, I had been using the final report of the research in Patient Needs in Digital to craft a presentation to be used by the technology directorate to display the findings and what we may want to do with the results. As Macmillan don’t currently have a strong strategy in digital, it’s exciting to potentially help develop Macmillan’s future plan. Being of my generation also helps to prioritise the most important features which will be used by the public.

A career’s management 1 to 1 was also set up by Macmillan to help the interns develop their career aspirations. This was great as we covered everything from LinkedIn and my CV to how best to approach the real world of jobs! The best thing to have happened in these 3 weeks, though, was the day that the video department allowed me to come with them on a filming day! We went to the University of Arts London to film and the experience was great. I hadn’t had any practical experience up until then and they were all friendly enough to let me bombard them with questions I had about the industry.

With only 3 weeks left, it’s surprising how quickly the internship has gone by but it’s been so much fun so far. The interns have been great company too along the way but for the next blog, look out for how out fundraising pub quiz goes!

Mid-internship here at Surfers Against Sewage

Following a long, hard but very enjoyable weekend working with the team at Boardmasters festival, I am now back in the office.

Being the chosen sponsored charity at the site gave us a huge advantage, in that artists would promote our movements, whilst videos and artwork such as a boat created from plastic bottles purely sourced from UK beach cleans were displayed at the festivals most popular locations.

I was very much involved with community engagement regarding the new campaign ‘Wasteland’, and informing the public on how to reduce their individual plastic footprint. Working closely with regional Reps from across the country gave me the opportunity to understand more about the problems they also faced with respect to marine pollution in different areas such as Scotland, Southampton and Essex; the experience has very much inspired me to become a regional Rep once the internship finishes.

My next task will be to work out how to re-map the online nationwide maps to smaller scale regional maps, in a user-friendly format which is also geographically accurate. Having 9 regional areas across the UK, this will be a task that may take a number of days to complete. I want to apply my GIS skills in order to create a more interactive map experience, whereby lines join up Reps across regions, with different colours or line thicknesses could portray especially strong relationships between certain Reps. Perhaps introducing small photos of each  rep could create more of a personal map, and some information about each Rep to accommodate this would improve the currently rather dull maps.

 

Will update on my final post!

Tech care of your health!

It’s no secret that the NHS has had a tricky past with technology. Just this year, we saw malicious software cripple 61 trusts across England and Scotland! However, the demands of an ageing population and the shift in the supply of healthcare professionals has meant that tech-enabled care is needed quickly to alleviate pressure from the bed blocking phenomenon.

As part of the devolution of health and social care in Greater Manchester, a Bolton locality plan set out how healthcare services would change over the next five years. This plan looks to introduce technology such as a push button, or fall sensors and alarm pendants worn around the neck, that can allow patients to safely go back to their own homes, rather than staying in hospital longer than necessary.

A Tuesday evening meeting with the Bolton Borough Youth Council reminded me of my fond memories as a Youth Councillor. I used the session to gather young people’s voice on current service issues as well as to introduce aspects of the locality plan. Within the last two years, since I was kicked out of the youth council for being too old, a lot has changed. The new group had managed to take on, even more, projects and even acquired a new fancier place of meeting. I wish I was two years younger! Seeing the continuous change in the social and cultural habits of the younger millennials, I finished up my time-slot by discussing how the Youth Council could actively work with HealthWatch to support their health research work. This is something that I will be following up with in due course.

To ascertain feedback, so that the locality plan could be adjusted to make the towns healthcare services fit for the future, HealthWatch helped run a community roadshow in the centre of Bolton. In a large white tent, you could find a team of eager HealthWatch researchers looking to learn your opinions on the £28.8 million plan for Bolton’s health and social services.

Naturally, I played the role of Dr Patel giving shoppers the chance to experience a simulation of video-call GP appointments. To ensure that this was nothing more than a simulation, I wrote up fixed scenarios that could be acted out by the willing patient. To my surprise, the majority people thought positively about this issue and not one person mentioned the need for additional safeguarding. Whilst I was off-duty, I supported the work of my colleagues by collecting people’s opinions on wearable and home monitoring technology. Undeterred by unpolished Gujarati and Hindi language skills, I managed to discuss concerns that some of the elderly minority population had.

In this third week at HealthWatch Bolton, I’ve sadly had little time to work with the BRASS (Befriending Refugees and Asylum Seekers) Centre. Instead, I visited the Victoria Hall Refugee and Asylum Seeker meeting place to collect more data. I got the scary feeling that for some people; I was the first friendly face, with which they felt comfortable enough to talk through their problems with, that they had come across since their resettlement.

Drop4Drop the good times don’t stop

Three quarters of the way through my time at Drop4Drop and it’s been a great experience so far. The research has been stimulating and I’ve learnt a great deal when it comes to water delivery systems in developing countries.

To help aid in achieving some of Drop4Drop’s goals I have had to research numerous African nations to see the suitability of starting projects in these countries. It has been very interesting looking in depth into these countries discovering facts about the past events leading to the current political climate which plays a factor in projects within that country.

Alongside this I have had to make assessments of the water resources of these countries coming across certain issues such as saline intrusions. This is when extraction of the natural groundwater encourages the nearby salt water, often from the oceans to be drawn into the space left ultimately destroying the quality of the water that was once there so that it’s undrinkable. I am therefore in the position to advise against any projects in these regions as they will not prove sustainable, but obsolete in a few years.

Another aspect of my internship is contacting other clean water charities in an attempt to find out more about their projects. Firstly this is to see if they are using any innovative technologies that could be applicable at Drop4Drop. Secondly it’s to gain the contacts of some in country partners to work with. This is because a very difficult part of initiating a clean water project in rural areas of developing countries is finding people on the ground to help implement the project and work with the communities that will be benefitting from the project.

A major issue facing groundwater in developing countries is the pollution of it from unsanitary practices contaminating the water creating and spreading diseases, so Drop4Drop is looking at incorporating safe sanitation practices into their projects. A product that I have found allows human waste to be turned into compost which can then be sold onto local farmers which helps to triple their yields and profits, all the while keeping the groundwater sources safe.

Drop4Drop mainly operates in groundwater projects however one area of research in surface (rainwater) storage that has proved fascinating to me is sand dams. This is where the community builds the dam structure and over 2 or 3 rain seasons sand builds up behind the dam and water is then stored in the pore spaces. This can hold 2,000,000 litres of clean, sustainable water which is then replenished by the seasonal rains and flash floods, which can also help to mitigate against the dangers of flash floods. I aim to present a project proposal to the charity coordinator based on this with the hope of it developing into a feasible project.

I’m really looking forward to what my final week at Drop4Drop entails.

The Last Days at the K&C Foundation

My final couple of days at the K&C Foundation has been an eventful one. Nearly 7 weeks after the Grenfell Tower fire and cheques are still coming in. What I now like to call MY cheque database is looking very hefty and it was a sad day on Thursday when I had to teach my colleague how to use it again, as I have been in charge of it for so long. A couple of very exciting donations came in this week as well- the biggest I’d seen yet! It is very shocking to have a colleague shout ‘Charlotte you have to read these numbers for me, I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.’, and to then read that EasyJet’s flight collection had raised over £200,000 for the Grenfell Tower Fund! The atmosphere in the office was amazing as we were all shell shocked at the sum!

The focus of this week has mainly been on social media and on the semi rebranding that the K&C Foundation has been undergoing. One area that the charity has tried to improve on is in the amount that they update their followers on different social platforms, and their weakest has been facebook. I helped the team to understand how to make different people admins on the page, and then undertook the role of updating all of their information and deleting anything that they didn’t want anymore. The mini rebranding has mostly revolved around a change of colour, moving from the classic blue to a magenta, or is it maroon… or is it purple? We enjoyed have team meetings about the theme and it was very funny attempting to find a name for the shade we chose! I then got to work with updating everything with this new colour- the logo, email signatures, branded letters etc etc.

The website has been another of my main focusses this week. This was going to be one of my top objectives prior to the Grenfell Tower and this final week has allowed me to get started there finally. I trawled through the pages, removing any information that was duplicated and changed layouts to make everything flow better and make more sense. The website is something the K&C Foundation is still not happy with, but I’ve been glad to contribute to an ‘okay’ interim state, until the time comes for a completely new rebranding.

This week again I have been able to sit in on another couple of meetings including one that was hosted in the Berkley Hotel in Knightsbridge- perks of the job! It has been my favourite part of my 4 weeks being able to go and listen to how the foundation liaises with businesses and other charities.

Before starting my internship I thought that 4 weeks was a long time. Turns out 20 days of work completely flies by. Working in a small team has been amazing as you can really get to know everyone and it was easy to feel completely at ease.  I am really going to miss this tiny office in Latimer Road, and although I didn’t really do anything that had previously been planned I feel like I have contributed much to the K&C Foundation and hope that my time here has been as valuable to them as I feel it has been to me.

Looking Forward with The K&C Foundation

My second and third weeks at the K&C Foundation have seen the office attempting to look forward from the Grenfell Tower fire and move back to normal, but with around 10 cheques still arriving daily, the fire is definitely at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

I started week two continuing to work on my ‘Big Donors’ List, which would allow the foundation to plan for the future and efficiently be able to recognise those who have been especially generous and make sure that they had been thanked. The data that the foundation receives from the different mediums of donation is often cryptic and required a certain amount of detective work to make sure that donors were thanked for the correct amounts. It has been really fantastic to read all of the different ways that people have fund raised for the victims of the tower and everyone in the office often becomes slightly teary and moved at some of the letters we’ve had to read.

Many of the donors who have given to the Grenfell Tower Fund requested to keep in contact with the Foundation, so one of my main activities throughout these two weeks has been identifying donors who live in the Royal Borough of the Kensington and Chelsea and adding them to the database. Although this task did seem slightly monotonous at times, I felt good knowing that these were people who will eventually donate again to the K&C Foundation to support their other campaigns.

In week three as a break from adding to the Database, (As much as I now am a professional at ‘Advantage Fundraiser’ it was nice to have a release from adding addresses), I was asked to do some analysis of donor and recipient location of the 2015-16 Winter Warmth Campaign. This campaign raises funds so that older people who face hardship during the winter months can be helped with their heating costs and keep warm. I mapped the locations of the hundreds of recipients and donors to try and identify a trend, which did turn out as hypothesised. This map I created will be used as a visual aid to demonstrate to the trustees at their meeting in September how the campaign geographically works.

My highlight of the middle two weeks has been attending a couple of meetings with local charities with the charity coordinator, just to see how they were getting on post Grenfell and here their opinions of the schemes in place to help those in need and to gauge the thoughts and emotions of the public. I found this most useful because I was really exposed to how a charity like the K&C Foundation interacts with those they support and how the build and keep up these relationships.

I’ve also had the opportunity during these two weeks to edit things here and there on the K&C Foundation’s website. This was going to be one of my main tasks pre starting my internship here and I was grateful to learn how the foundation runs their site. One of their main priorities recently has been to keep their social media up to date, and as their has not been the manpower to do this during the tumultuous  time after the Grenfell fire, this is something I hope to start with in my final week.

I am shocked at how fast my time here has gone and I cannot believe that I only really have 5 days left with the ladies at the K&C Office.

 

 

My First Week with Drop4Drop

Who are Drop4Drop?

Drop4Drop are a charity with the aim of providing safe, clean water to those that need it the most in some of the poorest countries throughout the world. As a result it undertakes most of its projects in India and various countries in Eastern Africa. You can visit their website here: http://drop4drop.org/

Alongside providing clean water it is very important that these projects be as sustainable as possible to ensure the longevity of each and every project to provide a constant supply of water to each community. This means that integrating new, innovative technologies is a key part of these projects and research into these is part of what I shall be doing during my placement.

During the first week of my Charity Insights Internship at Drop4Drop based in Brighton I have spent my time thoroughly getting to grips with the charity, exploring how it operates to see a project through from start to completion. In doing this I have read about some truly inspirational stories and learnt some absolutely shocking facts about the conditions that some of the world’s poorest people live under and deem as ‘normal’.

This has included using the Geological knowledge that I have learnt during the first 2 years of my studies to grasp an understanding of the underlying geology of the areas where the projects are being undertaken. For example looking at papers and other public information to discover if the water is clean of potentially toxic contaminants and also to look at the quantity of water resources available in a particular region. This means drawing together numerous components of research such as current and projected safe water usage, climate and recharge rates of aquifers. This is to ensure the feasibility of a project and ensuring the safety of the recipients of the water resource.

In the upcoming weeks I am going to be looking at other technologies being implemented by other organisations to see if they can be applicable to Drop4Drop’s projects to create greater efficiency in the water delivery systems used. I will also be researching other factors surrounding quality of life such as sanitation and how these can be implemented in current projects in an effective way in an attempt to increase the quality of life of those benefiting from the projects.