Blog posts

Wild Heath Festival PREPARING WEEK

 WaHH logo full colour (compressed)

 

Wild Heath Festival

14/07/2014 – 18/04/2014 Preparation for the Festival!!!!

 

14TH July 2014 – Monday

  • Email and phone correspondence with potential volunteers
  • Volunteer Wildlife Interpreter Interview s.

    sign spraying
    sign spraying
  • Response to specific volunteer role applications sent via websites and email.
  • Researching events happening this week in different communities like Hackney – to try to attend or post adverts in about the festival.
  • Starting to draw up a project plan looking at all the roles in the project – the sustainability of each role for the future of the project with volunteers only as the workforce.
  • Drawing up a plan to follow for future coordinators to use and share about what their jobs/tasks would involve – i.e. For the recruitment – target audience and ways of reaching them, weekly, monthly tasks to do and attend etc.
  • Creating new ideas about where to advertise the festival – researching popular sites – newspapers and events etc. Looking at the target audience etc.
  • Contacting organisations to post our event about the festival.

 

15th July 2014 – Tuesday

  • Email and phone correspondence with potential volunteers.
  • Processing of new volunteer application form sent to put on database.

    festival art
    festival art
  • Advertising on websites for the Heath festival with the festival poster and other details.
  • A drawing of a preparation plan summary for the volunteer fair tomorrow in Camden.
  • Making a summary plan of the activities needed to be completed in the creative session in the evening.
  • Creative session with other volunteers to help produce activities that were drawn up as well brainstorming of new ideas on top.
  • Arts and crafts part – so making, drawing, painting, sticking, spraying and getting ‘arty’ so beginning all the physical decorations and activities for the festival – i.e. making a massive beehive, bees etc.

 

16th July 2014 – Wednesday

 

  • Preparation for Camden Volunteer fair – printing leaflets, flyers, posters and arranging things to take to put on our stall.

    setting up for volunteer fair
    setting up for volunteer fair
  • Volunteer fair in Camden – representing Wild about Hampstead Heath on stall by myself!!! Other organisations present also. Interacting with other different volunteer organisation – networking and also speaking and interacting with public who were walking around who may want to volunteer. Got many emails and had many interesting conversations!!! Really great and beneficial experience!!!

 

17th July 2014 – Thursday

  • Responding and contacting all potential interested volunteers from the fair yesterday who provided contact details.
  • Correspondence with other interested volunteers – to arrange interview times and dates.
  • Statistical analysis on the feedback survey designed for inactive volunteers.
  • Preparation for the festival – more arts and craft!! – Continued from Tuesday.
Kubota ride to pick up equipment & activities
Kubota ride to pick up equipment & activities

 

18th July 2014 – Friday

  • Responding and contacting all potential interested volunteers from the fair yesterday who provided contact details.
  • Correspondence with other interested volunteers – to arrange interview times and dates.
  • Preparation for the festival – more arts and craft!! And putting all the activities together that have been completed.
  • Kubota ride around to collect equipment and activities in north of Heath.

 

20th July 2014 – Sunday

WILD HEATH FESTIVAL!!!!!!

setting up for the festival
setting up for the festival

 

wildlife graffiti
wildlife graffiti
bee hive pledges up to see
bee hive pledges up to see

First week with CWT

wildlife-trust

My internship working with Cornwall Wildlife Trust got off to a great start. Whilst here I will be investigating the feasibility of renewable energy installations at their head offices. The Trust does great things to protect Cornwall’s wild things and wild places, and with the engineering and economic aspects of my project, I was excited about both where I was going to be working and what I was going to be working towards.

The morning of the first day entailed general housekeeping, introductions and a site tour. There were a lot of people to meet and names to (try and) remember, but all were very welcoming and created a good working environment. I settled in quickly and hit the ground running in the afternoon; beginning the research for my project. My aim

for the first week was to conduct as much research around the subject of renewable energy installations as possible: identifying all aspects that would require consideration; collecting data sources & reliable points of reference; investigating possible sources of funding and generally preparing myself to complete the project effectively.

I continued my research on Tuesday and investigated the existing water/space heating systems at the offices, to determine what a new biomass installation would likely be like. This led me to looking at UK planning permission regulations and then to companies that specialise in renewable energy installations. I selected three companies, based in the South West, and made enquiries to arrange consultations in the coming days.

My third day with the Trust fell on the annual staff day out. This presented a great opportunity for me to get to know the people I would be working with and also to get out of the office and see the Trust’s newest nature reserve. We took a guided walk around the reserve and also saw a demonstration of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), being trialled by a university team, to photograph and map sites such as the one we were on.

Photo from the Trust's staff day out
Photo from the Trust’s staff day out

Back in the office on Thursday and I decided to investigate possible sources of funding for renewable energy installations. I found a number of possible schemes but after reviewing the criteria and application processes only a few remained that this project will be eligible to apply for. I identified three grant schemes that I will be completing applications for towards the end of my four weeks, when the project is better defined. I then investigated the UK energy market and gathered data on recent statistics as well as predictions for future trends, to allow me to assess how much benefit any renewable installation is likely to bring.

Friday, and the final day of my first week — one that has flown by. I had the first biomass installation consultation arranged for the afternoon and so spent the morning comparing various biomass central heating systems. I reviewed the work that I believed would be necessary, compared various potential fuel options and generally prepared myself to discuss the options at the consultation.

In Summary, the first week went great. I settled into the office, made good progress with my research, got a taste of the hands on work the Trust performs and formed a better understanding of how to progress with the project and successfully achieve my objectives.

Week 3 – Promotion of the TF Willetts Social Media Campaign

So week three is at an end and we’ve finally finished editing the video which starts the campaign, to check it out go to:

http://youtu.be/TsyC3swvDZY

The Facebook and Twitter pages are also now active with content we’ve scheduled to go up and hopefully we’ve started drawing attention to the charity – our whole aim!

This week’s tasks, alongside the social media content and video launch, were to film a second video and organise proceedings for two further events later in the year. This second video focused on an Italian guitarist who specialises in gypsy guitar, Giulio Romano, and is someone whose events the charity supports. The aim of this video is to showcase his work and receive Giulio’s personal feedback on what he thinks of the charity. To get this filming we went to one of his gigs Wednesday night after working in the office and got to experience his music for ourselves, not only did we hear Giulio and his friend perform gypsy folk songs on guitars but we also had a live painting being created of them as they played. All of which we have included in the video which is currently in the process of editing before we can publish.

In addition to this, there has been a large number of liaison emails and research to help get together the ‘interview series’ with celebrities for September and a choral flash mob in December at Paddington station as well as pulling a list of choir contacts together for the ‘choir of light’ project later in the year.

The plan for my final week is to set up a sustainable schedule for content to keep the pages active even after my internship is over and to gather as much information to provide TF Willetts with the basis on which to build their future projects.

3rd blog

3rd blog

The working environment in Oxford is quite different from London where you can feel people always in a rush and make the big city very busy. I like London, because the busy city lights my thoughts, passion and dreams, and stretches me to develop myself quickly. Nevertheless, I also appreciate the beautiful, peaceful, and elegant culture of Oxford, which enables people focus on thinking deeply.   This week, my work in George Institute is on data extraction form large number of papers, which requires me to go through papers quickly, and spot useful information precisely and efficiently. At first, I feel very struggling, for everyday, tens of paper to read, and more than ten categories of information need to be extracted, and I have to be very careful, because some definition of information is ambiguous. As having read a lot of papers, I developed to be more skilled about systemic literature review and data extraction, and have accomplished much work in different studies. Even more rewarding, the works contributed by me will go into some papers for publication, which makes me feel very exciting. At the same time, another big challenge for me is to learn statistic skills, particular is R language. I have no programming experience before, so I have to learn from scratch. Now, as a beginner, I have to say it is very painful to learn the programming language for me, but I feel very excited about it, for I clearly know this skill is extremely powerful for very broad fields, and I already enjoy the learning, the logic flows. The colleagues in George are very helpful, and they gave me links to listen R classes, and taught me about meta-analysis research, which broadens my horizon of my major.   Also, this is really a good opportunity for me to experience another working ambiance, and culture. It is very quiet in the office in George; researchers are very devoted into their work, very independent, and very focus. I am now already settled in, and trying my best to make the most of the time to learn skills and knowledge. I think it is important and rewarding to experience different working atmosphere, and learn about real world of working. IMG_20140714_173902IMG_20140716_130057 IMG_20140716_082753IMG_20140715_165907

project and work progress

2nd blog

Two weeks of work has passed, it is time to write them down.

What is my project about?

Blood pressure is associated with many problems as blood clots, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, etc, but it is unclear about the efficacy of blood pressure drugs on those diseases. Specifically, the project is focused on the effect of blood pressure lowering drugs on the prevention of atrial fibrillation. One of the questions below this topic is what kind of populations can benefit from blood pressure lowering drugs in preventing atrial fibrillation. Another question is whether there is a specific blood pressure lowering drug can make an effect on atrial fibrillation by a particular mechanism or all the drugs helping to obtain a lower blood pressure can be used to treat atrial fibrillation. The general project is to find the link between blood pressure lowering drugs and atrial fibrillation prevention on a meta-analysis scope. And my job is to support researchers in George Institute for Global Health to complete this meta-analysis by conducting a systematic review, extracting information from clinical trials and maybe also using STATA to conduct a meta-analysis at a later stage.

What have I learnt from the first two weeks?

The first task coming from George Institute for Global Health was delivered by skype, and the task was to sort data. It was the first time I had an online meeting, and given the task by skype. It was not that easy for me, since English is my second language, I was not fluent enough to communicate online at the beginning. Then I just told myself that I should be confident and believe in myself, because I had overcome all the difficulties before, and although in a lot of cases I performed not perfectly at the early days, I always put things on the right track afterwards, and achieved what I wanted eventually. I tried my best to focus on the requirement of the task, and took notes, and asked questions to get clear about how I should do to achieve it. After the skype meeting, I got on the work very quickly. To confirm I was on the right track, I sent the begin part of the work I had done to them for checking. Then I continued finishing the rest of the work. What I have learnt so far is to be confident, always ask questions to get clear enough about what the task is and how you could approach it. To make sure on the right track, split the big task into a small part and the rest, and send the small part of finished work to employer which can help you better understand the work and be confident about what you are doing and can also prevent futile work conducted under wrong approaches. However, it may also depend on the nature of the work and working atmosphere as well.

some tips for future applicants

Just had a look at some blogs posted by previous charity insight participants, they are so amazing! Informative, interesting and full of fantastic photos! However, few of the posts have mentioned about the application process of the charity insight programme, which is useful information, and will be the starting point of my blog.

 

Why did I desperately want to participate the charity insight programme?

I have never had a proper job before, so I am always hoping to gain some working experience to get to know the outside world, and contribute what I have learned in the university to the real community. Also, as a PhD student, I have been always focusing on the specific and deep research field, and I realized that I need a way out for fresh air, and for fun.

 

For time constraints, it is much difficult for PhD students to gain an internship opportunity. Not like undergraduates, PhD students only have 4-week annual leaving holidays each year, while companies/organisations usually offer internships lasting at least three months for students, rather than short-time such as one month duration, for it takes their costs to train apprentice. Thus there are more barriers to get an official internship opportunity from companies/organisations as a PhD student.

 

The charity insight programme launched by career center in Imperial College makes it easier to find a host for short-time internship by providing a bursary to students, which reduces the costs from the organisations, and provides a valuable chance to students (especially for PhD students).

 

How did I find a charity organisation?

Thanks to career center, Amy-a very helpful and considerate career consultant has helped me a lot in finding a charity organisation. She not only provided information about organisations that previous students had worked for, but also told me some valuable charity websites to hunt for charity organisations. Since my PhD is on vascular science, I am willing to work for a health care related organisation. From the blogs posted on the career center website, I learnt about a charity organisation-George Institute for Global Health which would enable me work on real trials. Even better, I found a very interesting project which was related to vascular science, but was very distinct from my current PhD study, so it would provide me a good chance to work on the same field but from a very different perspective.

 

How did I approach it?

Yasmina-another excellent career consultant spent much effort on my CV and cover letter correction. Then Amy gave me the contact details from previous programme participants who had ever worked for the George Institute, and she helped me polish my email approaching to the organisation. After several emails, I successfully got the internship opportunity.

 

How about visa issues related to international PhD students working?

As an international student, we have strict visa rule that we can only work within 20 hours per week during the study. On this condition, I contacted international office in Imperial College, and was informed that PhD students were allowed to use annual leaving entitlement to work full time with a permission letter from their supervisor, which was definitely great news for me. Thanks to my supervisor’s support, I got his permission and working allowance during my annual leaving holidays.

 

I really appreciate all the help from career center and also all the other people who have given me a hand during the application process, and I will definitely cherish this opportunity to gain a wonderful internship experience.

My survey’s going online!

rethink logoThis week has flown by. Wow. I also have to apologise for always writing and writing and writing (I lose myself in the process sometimes, which is why my posts end up as short stories). To make this week’s blog entry a little more endurable, I’m adding some colourful images!

So, what happened at Rethink this week? Again, I spent much of my time perfecting the primary care survey. I am quite amazed at how much time and thought goes into a piece of work that will only take 5 minutes to fill in. I have been rephrasing and slightly altering the order of questions so many times, because it has to be perfect – thousands of Rethink’s followers will (hopefully) see and respond to this survey, and the same applies to the other organisations we are collaborating with. So every question has to be perfectly clear and acceptable, especially considering the delicacy of the issues around mental illness.

The survey will be publicised through Rethink’s and the other organisation’s Facebook and Twitter pages, and (hopefully) circulate through the world of social media. This is exactly what we want, because it means that it will have a wide reach, but at the same time we have to be really careful about the statements we make, and how those could be interpreted. This is where you’ll be able to access my survey on Monday, where almost 90,000 people will see it:

Picture1

What adds to the level of difficulty is that I personally have somehow managed to avoid Twitter all my life – until now. I am familiar with the Facebook, but generally not a master of social media and technology – which I am using as an excuse for the sobering, plain appearance of my blog. Twitter however eludes me. How am I supposed to explain an issue about which I could write an entire thesis / bestseller book / unusually wordy Charity Insights Blog in 140 characters?! This is madness!

But rest assured – I found the courage to face this new challenge, and although it broke my literature-loving heart to cut down on words here and use abbreviations there, I came up with my first Twitter post! So the survey, which I am starting to develop motherly feelings for after investing so much time in it, will finally enter the big wide world!

Okay, I’ll be serious now, I promise. I also went to another conference yesterday. It was hosted by South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust’s Psychiatry Physical Healthcare Committee (PPHC) under the name Psychiatry Physical Health Conference. As you can tell from the name, unless you were as overwhelmed by it as I was, the conference was about the physical healthcare of people with mental illness.

As I mentioned in my last post, antipsychotic medication often causes severe weight gain, high cholesterol levels, and mental illness is associated with high smoking rates – all of these contribute to an enormous burden of diabetes and heart disease in people affected by mental health problems. This explains, at least partly, why this group of people dies on average up to 20 years earlier.

Everybody agrees that this is an unacceptable state – and yet it is widely accepted at the moment! Many of these patients don’t receive appropriate support to quit smoking, and their cardiovascular risk factor aren’t recognised and treated.

As I explained last week, the new CQUIN gives a financial incentive to do regular physical health checks on mental health patients, and then treat risk factors like high blood pressure (it’s not ideal, but at least effective). Issues like this were discussed at the conference yesterday, with my supervisor here at Rethink giving an introductory talk.

Now I am thrilled to see my survey going online soon, and really excited to get the first responses in! Yay!

Week 2 on the Beautifully Wild Heath

WaHH logo full colour (compressed)

 

2ND WEEK !!!!    7/07/14 – 11/07/14

The summary diary of the main activities day to day I was involved in the 2nd week.

Hedgehog trap on the Heath
Hedgehog trap on the Heath

7th July 2014 – MONDAY

  • Finishing & editing volunteer flyer leaflet with photo edit.
  • Researching all the volunteer advertising websites WAHH project appears in, so looking at how the project is observed by potential volunteers.
  • Spreadsheet for the different advertising websites WAHH project appears in and also potential websites to advertise in that are used at present by other volunteers. So updating existing adverts and placing new ones. Using the information given by existing volunteers – and the pie chart from statistical analysis already completed to find out which advertising method/organisation to go through so to get more volunteers.
  • Writing a template advert for the volunteering roles which can be used to be reposted once advert expires in future.
  • Researching volunteering fairs and events in the month of July – e.g. Camden Volunteer fair and booking in for a slot.

 

8th July 2014 – TUESDAY

  • Continue the research into volunteering advertising websites – update and create new ads on all the old and new websites for volunteering from the research carried out on the 7th July.
  • Register with Volunteering fairs by email and phoned them to confirm attendance.

    Wildlife camera
    Wildlife camera
  • Finished a template for volunteering adverts to use in the future.
  • Started writing and editing the letter to send to the volunteers that have been inactive for a long time – with a feedback form so creating a template to use for the future.
  • Email correspondence with potential volunteers – arranging times and dates for interviews (7 in total)
  • Outdoor Snake survey with forms to fill in during it.
  • Collecting also the wildlife camera roll to observe and check it.

 

9th July 2014  – WEDNESDAY

  • Email correspondence with potential volunteers – so responding back to sent applications via the volunteering websites and email correspondence with other volunteer enquires.
  • Phoning volunteers who have left voicemails.
  • Arranging interviews with volunteers.
  • Writing up a review template for volunteers who have been inactive for a long while – designing a quick and catchy review so they will fill in so we can get feedback from them and coming up with an incentive for them if they answer the questions.
  • Creating ideas for how we can keep our existing volunteers happy – so brainstorming ideas.
  • Writing up activity cards for the wildlife interpreters for the different activities to teach the public like the bird feeder activity and researching facts for them to use i.e. about birds in this case.

 

10th July 2014  – THURSDAY

  • Quite a few Volunteer Interviews today & then emailing registration forms and all about you forms to them as well as any other extra info they wanted emailed over.
  • Email and phone correspondence with potential volunteer applications that have been sent.
  • Designing the quick review from yesterday on survey monkey and finishing the editing and sending it off to all the inactive volunteers on the database so we can get feedback from them.
  • Researching and making notes of events and activities happening in the following week to remind the volunteers about so to get them involved.

    Snake surveying
    Snake surveying

 

11th July 2014  – FRIDAY

  • Volunteer application responses via email.
  • Arranging interviews for volunteers next week.
  • Setting up bike activities for the weekend – so finishing up the group activity design, printing off posters and activity leaflets, arranging all the books, leaflets, CDs for the bike to go out.
  • Excel database update of information for new volunteers with their application form processing.
  • Researching volunteering events for this month to get involved in – applying as an organisation with different close by boroughs.

 

 

Week Two with BHF

BHFSo having finished my second week with BHF it is safe to say I know a few things about IV diuretics and Integrated Care!

Feeling settled in (worked out how to get the boiling water from the tap for tea) I was less nervous about the week approaching. Friendly faces always greeted me in the morning and I now had a better understanding of some of the NHS terminology which was making reading government policies and strategies quite tough last week! My Aim for the week was to get through 2 evaluation reports, one about IV diuretics within the home and the other about Integrated Care schemes taking place in England, Wales and Scotland. Each of the projects carried out has been funded by BHF and the aim is to understand the process required to set up such schemes and have feedback from patients, carers and HCPs (Health care professional) to see whether the scheme was beneficial.

My role is to then link the results from these evaluations to existing Government Policies and create a document that can be published and branded as BHF to be taken to conferences to prove why these projects should be undertaken at a national level.

Throughout the week I have been creating extensive cross referencing tables for each of the following projects: IV Diuretics within the home (England), Integrated care projects (England, Wales, Scotland). Each country within the United Kingdom has has its own set of government policies (quite alot of reading!). During the week I had allocated time slots with the various members of different departments who were able to enlighten me as to their roles within BHF.

 

Week 2 – Derbyshire Wildlife trust

Week 2 has produced some new challenges, I’ve been involved in a few different activities in comparison to last week and have also grown in confidence enough to lead a few of the activities I’ve become more comfortable with.

On Tuesday I spent the day with the rangers getting an experience of what they do, I spent most the day doing weeding, although this probably wasn’t the most exciting activity to be involved in,  they did promise me that next time I’m with them it’ll be in a more interesting line of work. I’ve also arranged a meeting to speak with a ranger who had a large involvement in the production of the water cycle exhibition which will be really useful for my project, he will be able to give me more information about the planning and production of the display.thA2LRB8Y1

 This week I was trusted in taking the responsibility of a mini beasting activity, which was  nerve racking at first but after seeing how much the first group children enjoyed it, I felt a lot more confident for the next groups later that day. Working with various different wildlife trust staff, I find it interesting to watch all their different teaching styles and observe the way they deal with different situations.

On Friday I had probably one of my biggest challenges so far, having to do a water filtration activity with a group of children, all with learning difficulties; trying to help them to maintain their interest, while also paying extra special attention to ensure they were supervised in order to perform safe practise was a lot more difficult than I expected.

Tomorrow I look forward to getting involved in a family event in small mammal trapping, to monitor the numbers of small mammals in the Carsington area – early morning start, have to be at work at 7:30am!

So to sum it all up its been another productive week and I’ve been working hard on planning my project, I cant believe its already the end of the second week, I’ll be sad to leave at the end of it.