Uncategorized – Page 3 – Charity Insights

The High Street Centre – Update on progress

27 September 2016

Daniel Langston

Now a couple of days into my final week, I can start to reflect on my time here at The High Street Centre. Since my last post, I’ve completed 2 funding bids, totaling over £13,000, almost finished my program, and continued to help out wherever I’m needed.

The bids are for the funding of a holiday club for children with additional needs, and during my time here I’ve supported after school sessions on a Monday for the same young people, which has been really rewarding. Seeing how much they enjoy the couple of hours every week, and imagining the difference it must make to both them, and their family (in terms of respite) has emphasised for me how the funding I’ve applied for, and the program I’ve produced, can make real differences.

The actual process of forming the applications for grants; the long, ‘wordy’ questions, scrutiny over grammar and generally unquantitative nature was more complicated than I initially thought. However, as with most tasks, once I actually start and get into something, I can apply myself and complete it without too much difficulty. I learnt lots throughout, one noticeable factor of the process being backing up with comparative quotes everything you ask for: although tedious, this is obviously necessary on their part, and morally a charity probably shouldn’t be applying for more than it needs.

I’ve also continued to work with the over 55s IT class and have received some great feedback from several of the attendees: it’s been great to see how things that I see as simple on a laptop or tablet, such as transferring photos can open up so many opportunities once taught, such as being able to share family photos across the world. As a result of this, I am looking into becoming a home tutor alongside my studies.

I look forward to my last few days of my internship and hope to complete my program to a standard I’m happy with, and then tutor the team on how to use it.

CAT: Weeks 3 & 4: Farewell to the Hills

Phil Calado

4 September 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Zero Carbon Britain Anti-fracking flyer*

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

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

*Farewell to the hills of the Dulas valley*

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

Eden Project – checkpoint (2 weeks in)

Meryl Chittethazhathu Anil

28 July 2016

Meryl Anil

It is the 28^th 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 12^th 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!

Getting started at the UK Stem Cell Foundation

Alexander Dale

20 July 2016

Alex Dale

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

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

Eden Project Internship – First Day

Meryl Chittethazhathu Anil

18 July 2016

Meryl Anil

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.

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.

12^th 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.

Farewell to Future Frontiers

Summer Jones

17 July 2016

Summer Jones

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

They choose the relevant grade format that their school uses.

And fill in the grades as appropriate.

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.

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.

Future Frontiers

Summer Jones

11 July 2016

Summer Jones

Since my last post, lots has happened. In fact, time has flown by and I can’t quite believe it’s my final week.

Alongside my projects, I have been helping to organise one of our coaching sessions for sixth former’s at a local law firm. Normally, we train students to be our coaches but in this unique case, we have trained lawyers. The students seem really keen and this week they were having speaking on Skype with all kinds of professional experts as part of the program; solicitors, aerospace engineers, robotics engineers, graphic designers. The program has been a real success.

Task 2: Coach Quiz

Over the past couple of weeks I have steered away from task 1 as I awaited the decision to purchase the necessary software. Instead, I have been working on creating an induction quiz for new coaches to complete as part of their training.

It’s a fairly simple quiz. Coaches are verified using their email and simply cannot move on until they get a question correct. At the end, the completion of the quiz is logged so future frontiers can keep track of who has completed it.

If you aren’t authorised to complete the training, you will see this message.

Names are stored alongside the email addresses to give a personalised greeting.

A user can’t move on until their answer is correct.

Once the question is answered correctly, the next button appears.

When it’s finally over, the coaches will see this well deserved ‘well done’ message.

But all this is pretty useless unless somebody can keep track of who has done the quiz! That’s where the control page comes in.

On this page you can see a list of all of the coaches who have been asked to do the quiz and whether they have completed it or not. As you can see, all coaches have an email address and full name, giving me the ability to make the personalised greeting message shown above.

The page makes it possible to do the following

Log in/ Log out securely so that only those authorised to access the page can
Add a new coach to the list
Delete a specific coach from the list
Delete all coaches who have completed the quiz from the list
Search the list. For example, for coaches working in a specific school:

I’d like to add more functionality to the control panel. For example, being able to add or remove questions, or being able to ‘undo’ a deleted coach. Alas, this project has been forced to be put on pause while I work on task 1 again.

Technology specific detour: For anybody interested, I decided to use PHP, MySQL and Javascript/JQuery for my quiz. Having little to no experience with back end web development, I knew that there was lots of support online for these and, as I had a fairly short time period, decided this would be the best option. Now that I am more familiar with the concepts, I hope to move on to some more modern technologies in the future…

(Unfortunate) First Week on the Job

Ritchard Ouma

30 June 2016

Ritchard Ouma

My first week at Pure Leapfrog.

The first days were filled with the excitement of new days, people, and feelings as I was, for the first time, thrust into life as an “adult”. I have never held down a full 9-5pm job and Pure Leapfrog will be my make or break foray into life as a worker bee.

When I first walked in the startup vibe was impossible to miss. The long labyrinthine route to the little nook in Shand Street that gave way to a cavernous work-space remade underneath a working train line (Oh there goes the 4:30 train). The place is makeshift, and endearing in the way that only a place made by people can be. As I settled into my desk space surrounded by startups, and cool young people engaged in their passion and desire to change the world for the better, a message pops up on my phone “Leave vote gaining”. I push it aside and get ready for the tasks at hand.

During the week, I had to adjust to the people, and picked up the habit of tea drink (see Image above) and talking politics with my co-workers.

I was tasked with creating an infographic/map for the company that clearly demonstrates the state of community energy today. In addition, I have to work with a team mate to prepare a dossier for the CEO to aid in attracting funders for a meeting in two weeks.

I threw myself at these tasks(at first).

Nonetheless, the week progresses, holes appear in roof of the workplace letting water from the harsh rain above pour into our work space (see below attempts to fix the issue) as if mirroring the holes that have appeared in my enthusiasm and drive allowing the laziness and drift to seep in. Nonetheless, progress is good and tasks are being completed.

It is now the after on Thursday 23 June 2016 and my tea has run out and so too have the tasks for the day. It is 4pm and the late day procrastination has set it and with it the discussion of the future of the United Kingdom’s place in the superstructure that is the European Union (EU).

I overhear a conversation between my co-workers and decide to ask: “Hey guys isn’t weird that this whole campaign has been called ‘Brexit’, as if to frame the choice in the voters mind to leave?” My co-worker replies “Huh, I’ve never thought about that… though I do think it stems from the fact that people are being asked whether they want to leave.” I counter by mentioning ” Wouldn’t it have been better to call the vote ‘Bremain’ to frame it as a choice of whether to STAY or go rather than to GO or stay?”. “After all one only needs to read a page of Daniel Kahneman’s Think Fast, Think Slow to see how susceptible we are to framing and conditioning”. She looks at me puzzled and says “Huh, I’ve never thought about that. Anyways I don’t we will vote to leave” . That was where we left that conversation.

It is Friday morning and we all know just how wrong she was. The pound risen then fallen, the markets swooning, and financial experts nervously muttering “Is this another Lehman”?

What about Pure Leapfrog, this charity nestled amongst the many startups on 26 Shand Street. What of my dreams of innovating within the community energy sector and trumpeting the advantages of community ownership and initiative. What of my CEO, and co-workers? And indeed, what of these now embittered unions?

I turn to my fellow co-worker and ask looking for reassurance, “What do you think will happen?”

He looks back and says “What right-wing government has ever voted for community energy?”