Charity Insights

Well it’s the end of the first week of the autumn term and all but one of the Charity Insights internships has come to an end. We have had some fantastic feedback from our charity partners. Here are just a selection of their comments:

“Will was an enthusiastic, well liked and respected member of the team. I think he exceeded expectations and that is in the light of having arrived with an excellent CV in the first place. The work he has undertaken with a creative, methodical and detailed approach on Social Return on Investment is invaluable.”
Richard Mills, Big Issue

“Alex has been very enthusiastic, diligent and hardworking, and full of good ideas, and has been a real pleasure to work with. She’s been able to tackle some projects that we hadn’t got round to working on yet due to time constraints. She has used her neuroscience expertise to guide and advise us on particular on-going projects in this area.”
Helen Eaton, Royal Society Publishing

“Ben more than fulfilled the expectations of the team and the support has been invaluable. Seldom do we see such enthusiasm, reliability and commitment as we’ve experienced with Ben.” (This also came with a list of no less than 10 internship outcomes!
Sylvia Gardiner, LUCIA

“As far as we were concerned it was a real gift to us to be able to work with Lydia in this way. She did an excellent piece of work and we will be posting it on our own website shortly.  Thank you Lydia and thank you Imperial College and Charity Insights.”
Charles Secrett & Fi Radford, The Act Alliance

“Taking on Eleanor through Charity Insights has been a fantastic opportunity. For many charities the ability to grow and take on extra staff is limited, therefore Charity Insights has given us the luxury of getting a project done that we normally wouldn’t have been able to do”
Manos Moschopoulos, IDEA

“The work Amira has done for the charity has been very useful to us, and having spoken to Amira she has got a lot out of her experience too – so it has been fantastic all round; I think it’s great that Imperial offers this to their students, and it’s obviously great for us as a charity too, so thank you very much!”
Patrick Smears, KEEN London

“It has been brilliant having Helena with our GIS team over the last month. Helena has been a great asset to a number of teams including ours while at the British Red Cross. She has gained some GIS expertise and these insights should stand her in good stead. We have certainly learnt much from her and her skills.”
Andrew Braye, British Red Cross

These are just a selection of the lovely comments we have received by phone and email. Well done all of you! I am looking forward to hearing more over a glass of wine and some cheese on Monday!

Amy

Read Some fantastic feedback! in full

Yesterday Eileen and I popped along to Shoreditch, East London to visit Eleanor who is hard at work at Idea (the international debate education association). Eleanor has been researching female participation at debating competitions which has meant analysing a huge amount of data!

Eleanor’s supervisor Manos told us a bit more about the charity. We were surprised by its size; the website receives up to 3 million unique visitors in a year and Idea has offices in several countries. Interns at Idea often later go on to be full time members of staff at the organisation so Eleanor is getting some great experience.

Manos told us that taking on Eleanor through Charity Insights has been a “fantastic opportunity”. He went on to say that “for many charities the ability to grow and take on extra staff is limited, therefore Charity Insights has given us the luxury of getting a project done that we normally wouldn’t have been able to do”. He also expressed how it was great to have an intern from a science background as the majority of interns and staff have studied humanities or law.

Eleanor will still be hard at work for a week or so but feels that so far she has grown in confidence and enjoyed the office dynamics of working for a charity. Food for thought for future career planning!

Read Visit to Idea in full

The first of the Charity Insights participants started their internships last week & Eileen and I are delighted to see the blog posts starting to come in. We are really looking forward to hearing more about everyone’s internships.

We have another participant to announce – Will Prince, third year Physics who will be doing his internship at The Big Issue Foundation.

Just before the end of term we ran a preparation workshop for our participants. This was a great chance for all the interns to meet each other and to hear about the projects that they will be embarking on!

Read Internships are well underway! in full

After some thorough interviews with our shortlisted applicants the Charity Insights participants for 2013 so far have been confirmed as:

• Alex Berditchevskaia, PhD Bioengineering, internship at Royal Society Publishing
• Amira Hassan, second year Biology, internship at KEEN London
• Ben Fernando, first year Physics, internship at LUCIA
• Emily Lehtonen, second year Zoology, internship at The RSPB
• Frances McFadden, second year Biology, internship at Durham Wildlife Trust
• Helena Wright, PhD Centre for Environmental Policy, internship at the British Red Cross
• Lydia Sheldrake, second year Biology, internship at the ACT Alliance
• Nick Birtle, second year Geophysics, internship at Blue Ventures

Well done to everyone! We still have one or two students to interview so watch this space for announcements of other participants!

We are really looking forward to working with all of these students over the summer and reading their blog posts about their experiences.

The interns will attend a preparation workshop on Wednesday 26 June with Eileen and I before starting their four week internships anytime between the beginning of July and the beginning of September. Look out for their blogs from July onwards!

Amy

Read Charity Insights Bursary award winners announced! in full

Eileen and I have enjoyed reading all the applications for the charity insights scheme. There are some really fantastic organisations our students hope to work with from the Durham Wildlife Trust to the Big Issue.  We are looking forward to meeting the shortlisted applicants at interview over the next few weeks!

At interview the applicants will be required to do a 10 minute informal presentation about their chosen charity and project as well as answering some interview questions.

Good luck to all!

Amy

Read Applications are in! in full