Category: 2017 Charity Insights

Second week at Marches Energy Agency

To be honest I didn’t even realise that my journey at MEA has just pasted the half point a few days ago, not sure if it’s because my concentration on work or just because of that theory which states you feels time goes faster as you grow older. Anyway, let me introduce you what I have done since my first post.

After armed myself with related knowledge and learned what the organization do, I began to do researches that would benefit both MEA and myself. Nowadays solar PV is becoming a popular option for consumers to cut their energy bill as the price of Solar panel dropped significantly since 2011(from £11000 to around £5000 for a 16kW panel). It’s also estimated that the national electricity price will increase in the following years, thus several organizations, including SolarTrade UK, one of the leading team in the field, believe that there will be a large expansion of Solar PV business by 2020. Apart from that, lot of families also got themselves a rechargeable battery to store day-time energy for the night use, saving them even more money on bills. MEA is looking forwards to knowing the recent development of solar technology, also the situation of related business, including how the other charities or councils are supporting the development. With those questions in mind I started my research journey.

I got the most of the answer from internet, especially in the UK government website where there’s a file folder that contains all the solar panel installation record across the country. I managed to separate multiple data points and produced some graphs for presentation. I also came up with a list of councils that are supporting their local solar PV construction, by investigating their website and their registration documents I got some idea of how their funding works and how much money is spent on the work. I actually learned how to do those in week 1, guess those reading have already paid off.

As I mentioned in my last post I got the chance to visit a solar manufacturer in Birmingham last Friday. I briefly interviewed one of the staff about the future of this application, the staff told me that the price of Solar PV might not drop further in short future as China is offering solar panel at such a low price that the actual sale price has to be increased to protect UK market.

Tomorrow I am going to give a presentation about my research, after that I will investigate the work of other energy charities and possibly find what MEA can learn from them in the future. I will be back shortly with further report, see you soon.

My First Days at the K&C Foundation

Before starting my 4 weeks at the K&C Foundation I had sorted a plan of action with the Foundation about how I could work with them and contribute to their existing schemes. However, this was all prior to the horrific Grenfell Tower Fire. The K&C Foundation has been instrumental in collecting funds raised to help the victims and those affected by the fire and making sure that 100% of the money donated reaches those in need. Usually in the little K&C office, there are 5 people who work and who take in under 50 cheques a month. Due to the fire this drastically changed. With thousands of donations flooding in through 5 different mediums including online and physically, they were swamped with the generosity of people globally. They had up to this point dealt with everything extremely well but obviously the staff’s usual roles were halted whilst they focused on organising the distribution of donations for the Grenfell Tower Appeal.

My first week happened to be roughly 4 weeks after the disaster. Life was just starting to get back to normal in the office, with the everyone starting to look back at their emails pre Grenfell, reorganising cancelled meetings etc etc. This however did not mean that there wasn’t any Grenfell admin left to be done, and this is where I stepped in. My first week mainly revolved around inputting the 1000’s of donated checks into the Foundation’s database, uploading CAF vouchers (which is another way for individuals to donate money), and learning how the K&C Foundation processes and keeps track of their money. What I worked on next was tackling the enormous spreadsheet of cheque donations. I divided this spreadsheet into various categories of School, Churches, Businesses, Organisations and Individuals and was able to identify the most generous of donations. I then began finding addresses and emails for donors in order to write letters of thanks from the K&C Foundation. This charity prides themselves on being personal and small enough to be able to really connect with their donors and therefore it was definitely a high priority to thank the generosity of the population. I got to have exciting trips to put in cash donations from charity buckets and go and visit ‘FRANK’ which is the franking machine using to put postage on letters.

This task took up a significant amount of time of week 1 understandably due to the thousands of people who had donated to the cause. After the cheque donations, I was taught how to update contacts in the Foundation’s database, which is a instrumental tool that they use in order to keep in contact with those that donate funds.

Having dealt with this primarily for cheque donations, I moved onto the other mediums of donation. The K&C Foundation was accepting donations not only through cheques, but also their own website, Just Giving, The Big Give and Bank transfers. I was tasked with analysing this data to find the groups of people who had donated significant amounts of money and compiling a list, so that in future weeks the Foundation can organise a function to thank these people again.

My first couple of days at the K&C Foundation have really shown to me the generosity of people. Processing multiple cheques from the same individuals shows how some humans just want to keep on giving again and again. Also being able to understand that some people have the humility to donate over £10,000 anonymously, and that they don’t donate to boost their egos and make themselves feel better, they just want to improve the lives of others, this I find amazing. I have also learnt how to work in a small office environment, and how in a small team, nothing you do is for yourself, everyone fills in to help each other where needed and no one has any qualms about being asked questions and taking on extra roles. I am very much looking forward to the rest of my time here- seeing how the Foundation normally functions on a regular basis, and how each of the roles in the office support charities and schemes in the borough.

Final Week at The Brilliant Club

On the Monday of my fourth week at The Brilliant Club, the organisation held a Mid-term review. The entire team of approximately 60 people gathered in a single conference room and each department (Finance, Operations, Evaluation etc.) held a brief presentation to communicate their work and its outcomes to other departments. This was a unique experience in that it helped me complete my picture of how the entire organisation functioned and how different departments complement each other.

I had two major tasks to complete throughout this last week: to conduct interviews with former tutors from The Scholar’s Programme which I had scheduled in the previous week and to write up the report for the 2016 London Provider Feedback Survey according to the organisation’s brand and style guidelines.

Conducting interviews was a completely new experience – for the first time, I found myself on the other side of the barrier. I was surprised to find out just how much time an interviewer must put into the preparation of the interview so that he or she is not caught off track by the interviewee. Before my very first interview, I practised talking through the introductory information that I would communicate to the interviewee before proceeding with the interview itself; I also practised the interview questions themselves. Even then, in the middle of the first interview, when there was pressure on me to ask questions smoothly one after the other to give the impression that I have the interview under control, at one moment I panicked and briefly lost track of my thoughts. However, after this first time, the flow of all subsequent interviews was perfect. The former tutors expressed a variety of opinions on issues such as whether their experience at TBC had any impact on them applying for their current position or whether their experience at TBC is in anyway useful on their current position. My initial plan was to tape-record all interviews and transcribe the responses but this would have been far too time-consuming and, given the circumstances, unrealistic. I therefore took notes throughout each interview and then transcribed them into a table. Unfortunately, given that I started this project during in my 3rd week, I would not have time to process the answers in any way. However, I did submit all the recorded responses to TBC for them to process.

In between my interviews, I worked on the report. I read the organisation’s brand guidelines handbook to understand how branded documents are put together. I also read through the organisation’s style guidelines to understand how to write about sensitive issues. For example, the organisation prefers the term ‘under-represented groups’ rather than ‘disadvantages groups’, ‘high-performing’ rather than ‘smart’ or ‘bright’ (as the latter two are not quantifiable), and ‘highly-selective universities’ rather than ‘elite’ or ‘prestigious’. In the previous week, I produced various figures to visualise the survey data, this week I wrote down findings and recommendations. For example, it turned out that some project providers would like to have access to more guidance material as to how to best supervise the student throughout the placement and also see some more personal development training for the students prior to the start of their placement. On the last day of my placement, I submitted the work to my supervisor, shook hands with everyone to say goodbye, received The Brilliant Club mug as a gift and that was it!

Third Week at The Brilliant Club: A New Project

At the start of my third week at The Brilliant Club (TBC), I learnt that I would not be able to interview project providers on The Nuffield Programme. The reason for this was most that although the Nuffield Research Placement scheme is run by TBC, it is funded by the Nuffield Foundation who did not approve of the project. This came as a slight shock because it meant that a significant part of the work I had done over the course of the past two weeks could not be used. However, there was fortunately a second option – I could quickly set up a different interview project where I would be to apply all of my recently acquired knowledge about the science of a research interview.

My new research project would be based on The Scholars Programme (TSP). TSP recruits, trains and employs PhD tutors to deliver university-style tutorials to small groups of pupils at elementary and secondary schools. The subjects of the research would be former tutors from TSP. The research, in the broadest terms, would investigate the impact of the tutors’ experience at TBC on their future career. It would seek to find out which, if any, parts of their tutoring experience were beneficial to their future job application, and whether, if at all, had the time at TBC helped them to accelerate their career growth. The research, other than that it would provide destination data about TBC’s ex-employees, would serve as a baseline for the improvement of propagation material for the recruitment and retention of tutors.

This new research project was delegated to me by TBC’s Midlands & Southwest regional director who also sent me a list of about 30 e-mail addresses of TBC’s former tutors who stated in an exit survey that they are happy to remain in touch with TBC. Just as I had done for my first project, I drafted a research description, a series of questions to be asked, and an informative e-mail for my potential interviewees. Given that TSP is TBC’s internal programme, there was no need to wait for any confirmation and once the above-mentioned documents were approved by my supervisor, I began contacting tutors almost immediately. Out of the 30, 8 responded and said they would be willing to take part in the interview. I received these responses throughout the week and therefore scheduled all interviews for the following, fourth, week.

During my third week at TBC, I also began working more intensively on the ‘2016 London Provider Feedback Survey’. As mentioned in my previous post, this survey was completed by previous year’s project providers on the Nuffield Research Placement scheme and my task was to summarize the data from the survey and come up with recommendations. The survey was completed by approximately 50 respondents from the Greater London & Surrey area and asked 4 principal types of questions: i) Yes-No-Maybe, ii) Select from the following, iii) Strongly Agree – Agree – Neither – Disagree – Strongly Disagree, and iv) Open-Ended Answer.  I tallied all responses and transferred all data to relevant figures: pie charts, bar graphs, doughnut charts etc. I completed all the necessary data processing during this week and planned the report writing for the next.

Throughout all this time, my responsibility still was to scout for new contacts at London’s universities/research institutes and send out e-mails. The response rate was still very low but every new project provider recruited meant that one or more students could now have a life-changing experience, which is what kept me motivated to carry on working on this otherwise rather dull task.

 

My first week at Clarity

My first week at Clarity passed by quicker than expected. But that could be the result of starting on a Tuesday and finishing early on the Friday. But before I dive into the events of my first week at the charity, let me provide you with an insight into what they’re all about.

Clarity is a social enterprise that produces home care and personal care products. The company has charitable status as the majority of their workforce has some form of disability. The charity uses the money that they make from the sale of their products to support and provide employment for those with disabilities.

The role I have taken on within the charity involves working as a lab assistant and conducting desk-based research. Currently my research is focused on finding an alternative to an antibacterial agent that is used in some of their hand washes. Although this compound has not been banned by the E.U, its use in personal care products has been restricted to 0.3%, for it has found to cause hormonal imbalances and has been linked to cancer.

Although there are various types of antibacterial agents, finding an alternative has slightly more difficult than expected. This is due the sensitivity of the formulations currently used to make the hand wash, any slight changes could completely alter the stability of the product. Therefore, over the next two weeks, I’ll be focusing on how the formulations can be adapted to the use of different antibacterial agents.

First Two Weeks at The Brilliant Club: The First Project

My Charity Insights internship is at The Brilliant Club – a charity that aims to increase the number of students from under-represented backgrounds at highly-selective universities in the United Kingdom. The Brilliant Club office is located in the Kensington Centre on Hammersmith road, next to Kensington Olympia. The entire London branch of the organisation is housed in a large open-space office which is shared together with Future First and has a seating capacity of approximately 100 people. My motivation to undertake a placement at this organisation stemmed from my previous experience of working for People In Need – a Czech charity focused on educating children from excluded Roma communities in the Czech Republic, and from my long-held belief that is it through education that growing world inequality should be tackled.

My four-week internship at the Brilliant Club was, in broad terms, to consist of helping the organisation run the so-called Nuffield Research Placements scheme and simultaneously complete a related research project. The Nuffield Research Placement scheme is a four to six-week summer programme, where 16-17-year-old students are placed across research institutions in London. Under the supervision of a researcher (called the ‘project provider’), they complete an individual research project in the provider’s area of science. It is an opportunity for them to gain first-hand experience of what working in a research environment is really like just before applying to university. The scheme is funded by the Nuffield Foundation (hence called the ‘Nuffield Research Placements’) but it is contracted to and run by The Brilliant Club in Greater London & Surrey. On this scheme, The Brilliant Club mainly supports students from low income backgrounds or with no family history of higher education as a part of their mission to widen university access.

My individual project at The Brilliant Club would also revolve around the Nuffield Research Placements scheme. The initial idea was that the goal of the project would be to find out how the proposition to supervise a secondary-school student can be made more attractive to the researcher. Unlike other programmes run by the organisation, where tutors are paid, there is no financial support offered to project providers on this programme. As a result, a majority of researchers (over 90%) contacted to host a student decline the opportunity, and each year, there are students enrolled in the programme for whom a placement cannot be provided. My role would be to interview current project providers, attempt to identify key motivational factors and subsequently draw conclusions about how new researchers could be attracted to take part in the scheme.

My time at The Brilliant Club, that has now come to a conclusion, can be broken down into three distinct phases and I have dedicated a blog post to each of these. The first phase, in which I will talk in more detail in this blog post, essentially stretched over the period of the first two weeks. The subsequent two were a week long each.

My first day at the organisation started off with induction formalities. I received a laptop, a company e-mail address, access to the company’s shared file database, a card to access the office, and was also shown how to evacuate the building in case of an emergency.  Throughout the day, I was introduced by various members of staff in one-on-one presentations to all the programmes run by the organisation (The Scholar’s Programme, Researchers In Schools etc.). Mainly, however, I was briefed by my supervisor where things currently stand with regards to the Nuffield Research Placement scheme and what work she would like me to complete. I was told that a certain number of students have been accepted to participate in the scheme based on their academic credentials (I cannot disclose exact numbers due to the issues of confidentiality) but that The Brilliant Club has not yet managed to secure placements for all of them, i.e. that there simply are not enough project providers. Over the following two weeks, my task would be to compile contact information of researchers in universities, research institutes, small business etc. who could potentially host a student. I would then send each and every one of them a so-called ‘cold-contact’ e-mail with main information about the programme and ask them whether they would be interested in hosting a student. This was a rather dull and repetitive task but something that had to be done and there was no other way around it. My other task, was to read through and summarise a survey titled the ‘2016 London Provider Feedback Survey’. This survey was completed by previous year’s project providers and detailed their experiences of hosting a Nuffield student. The work on this would become more intense in the 3rd and 4th weeks of my time at The Brilliant Club and will be described in more detail in future blog posts.

Throughout the first two weeks, I also worked on my project. Coming from an engineering background, I had no prior knowledge of how to conduct a research interview – a social science discipline. I consulted a paper from ‘The National Centre for Research Methods’ titled ‘How many qualitative interviews is enough?’ to give me an idea of the scope of the task I had set myself. After having read through some more material about how to conduct research interviews, I began drafting a number of documents: i) a description of my research to clearly articulate its purpose and lay out what information is to be gathered from the interviewees, ii) a rough sequence of questions to be asked, iii) a draft message to be sent to the project provider to explain what the research is and why their input is essential. After two weeks of preparation, all I was waiting for, and hoped this would be a formality, was an approval from the Nuffield Foundation that I can start conducting the interviews.

 

 

My First Week at Full Fact

Full Fact, the charity I’m currently working at, is an independent factchecking charity that “…provide free tools, information and advice so that anyone can check the claims we hear from politicians and the media.” They do factchecks in a variety of areas from the NHS to student debt, and factcheck claims made during the Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), among others.

While Full Fact factchecks claims in many different areas, they have yet to touch claims/questions made regarding the metaphysical realm, such as “What is life?” or “To be, or not to be?” or “I think, therefore I am.” Such questions are best left to the reader to consult Quora.com, consult a Philosophy professor, or ponder about over lunch.

Full Fact currently has two factchecking tools: Live – which monitors TV subtitles and other sources and then factchecks (near instantaneously) claims for which reliable data do exist – and Trends – which seeks to determine the sources for inaccurate claims that have been repeated.

I given the task of improving on the automated factchecking process that Full Fact employs. Automated factchecking can be broken down into 3 essential stages: understanding the claim, obtaining the relevant data and finally, presenting the required data. The first stage involves Natural Language Processing (NLP), which incorporates, among other things, linguistics. The second stage entails getting facts (and not opinions) from official and impartial sources of information such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS). These facts would then be presented in the last stage, in a simple and unambiguous manner.

I spent the first week reading up a bit on NLP, and delving into the second and third stages; my focus was on GDP data from the ONS’s website and the different claims that could be made regarding such data. I wrote several Python functions for the different ways in which we could interpret these claims, and ran the GDP data through these functions/scripts for evaluation. Given a sequence of real data, it was interesting to see how one could present different intepretations of it.

My biggest takeaway so far isn’t the heavy lunch that I had at the nearby Pret a few days back, but rather, the fact that implementing an idea might not always be as easy as it seems. And that Google – and not Dogs – are man’s best friend.

Team Up – tackling educational inequality

Educational inequality is a huge problem throughout our education system. At primary school, only 1 in 3 children from poorer families achieves the expected levels in reading, writing and maths at age 11. At secondary school, 33% of pupils on Free School Meals achieved 5 A*-Cs at GCSE compared to 60.5% of all other pupils. Of these students, 1 in 4 make it to university compared to nearly double the amount of all other students. These students have a 1 in 1500 chance of making it into Oxford or Cambridge whereas 1 in 20 students from private schools go on to study at these universities.[1]

I’m working with an educational charity called Team Up whose mission is to help end educational inequality by delivering tuition in Maths and English to students from low-income backgrounds. They do this using a team of volunteer tutors. As one of these tutors over the past year, I have witnessed first-hand how the programmes that Team Up run can influence students, by both helping them to improve their grades and providing them with a role model to inspire them.

My project is focused on developing Team Up’s maths curriculum. The tutors are provided with lesson plans and student worksheets for the tuition sessions. As well as this, students on the programmes sit baseline and progress tests to assess their knowledge and development. My job is to assess the effectiveness of these current resources and develop them further. This will allow the programmes and individual sessions to run more smoothly, allowing both the student and tutors to get the most out of their time with Team Up.

 

 

[1] Teach First “Impossible?” Policy Report

First week at Marches Energy Agency

It is the 9th of July and it has been exactly one week since I started working in Marches energy agency. Thanks to my previous visits I managed to get used to the working place fairly quickly and made myself comfortable in a nearby accommodation. So overall speaking it’s not a bad start and I’m really enjoying this whole experience.

In case you didn’t know, the charity I am working with (MEA) is an energy charity located in Shrewsbury, it’s an organization full of talented and passionate people who are dedicated to fight local fuel poverty and climate change. My role comes in to research the new green energy applications which can be potentially used by MEA in the future, also to look for new possible services MEA could bring in the future by learning from other bigger organisations. Their office building is very environmentally friendly and is also one of the few buildings that has a ‘A’ grade Energy performance certificate in UK.

After announcing my arrivial using MEA’s twitter account, my work at MEA has officially started. The first week I concentrated on the background research, as well as doing some office work that help me to get to know each aspects of charity’s work. I particularly like this flexible way of working as I can decide my own approach to the goal based on my interest. So far I have learned a number of house energy solutions, including their average performances and some difficulties/disadvantage. (Certain solution such as loft insulation may not be practical as it takes too much space and leaves loft unsuitable for storage).  I have also looked through some files about government funding, and found great house energy efficient can not only bring financial advantage, but also lowers the risk of cardio-respiratory disease and brings mentally-well being. It’s also a good way to boost local economy as new application will bring more job opportunities. I really love the independent research as some results surprises me a lot and there’s always friendly staff in MEA when I need help.

For the next week, I plan to conduct further research about solar panel and storage battery application, which I believe can be a widely-used technology in the short future. I may visit a few solar PV manufacturers to learn some professional opinions about the future of this application. So please stay tuned for more information.

 

 

Solar energy status, extra energy can be sold to national grid
Part of the polymer insulation (yellow) around the office building

 

Marylebone FoodCycle: this is not my last goodbye

So here I am writing my ultimate blog for Charity Insights at the end of my internship at Marylebone FoodCycle. It has been a month full of new encounters, impactful experiences and blissful moments shared with the people I have met on my volunteering journey. I have written my last report and sent the last few emails as part of my project, and it is now time to reflect upon my experience.

Working for Marylebone FoodCycle at St. Paul’s Church allowed me to get an insight into what working for the charity and social sector is like; it gave me a deeper understanding of the dynamics involved in such organisations. I loved being able to take part in multiple aspects of FoodCycle, beyond my own project, as not only did it show me the role of FoodCycle from different angles but it also triggered new contacts with people from incredibly diverse and fascinating backgrounds. Because people truly are the key in life experiences. It is through the encounters you make that you learn most about ourselves and about the world we live in.

Leaving St. Paul’s was made easier after Alex, my supervisor and one of the hub leaders, Svetla, took me out to the local pub as a last goodbye. I think this underlines the nature of social charity work itself; because you are so involved with other human beings, your work inevitably becomes more humane. This is why I really recommend the Charity Insights scheme to every student at Imperial, and volunteering in general. I am so grateful of Imperial College for supporting what I believe to be an essential part of our education. It has allowed me not only get an appreciation of the sector and develop my skills, but also apply and share them for a critical social and environmental cause.

I will keep it to here, as I believe the most important has been expressed. Thank you for reading me and feel free to approach me whenever you fancy a chat about FoodCycle, nutrition or food waste (:

Enjoying my Pimm’s on a glorious Friday at the end of my internship with Alex and Svetla.