Blog posts

How many buses does it take to fill a barn?

Now just under ¾ of the way through my internship at Sacrewell and I have catalogued about 3 times the number of objects I originally aimed for.

The project is progressing rapidly and I am really enjoying working at such a fast pace. Every time I finish cataloguing the machinery in one barn then I feel a sense of achievement, but am a bit lost. I end up scraping the bottom of the barrel searching for useful tasks to do (pun intended, we have a lot of barrels). Just when I am getting bored of double checking manufacturer’s names or re-taking photographs in better lighting… then someone tells me there is a hidden pile of objects over there! I spring into action, camera in one hand and a pair of work gloves in the other. What originally appears like a mass of tangled wood and metal deconstructs into 3 mangles, 3 washing machines, 3 grind stones, a steelyard, a chaff cutter and a cake breaker. Please don’t make the same mistake I did and think a cake breaker belongs in the Great British Bake Off tent. It is for breaking up oil cakes, made from the pulp left after the extraction of oil from plant seeds, into small pieces to be fed to livestock. Not to be presented to Mary Berry.

As it stands, I have catalogued 566 entries into my database. However some of them hold up to 24 objects in 1 entry, because who feels the need to individually label 24 identical wooden wheel spokes. Not me. I am far too busy finding new and exciting machinery! Which leads me to the latest discovery…

Sacrewell is a 550 acre farm, 500 acres of which is rented to Riverford Organic Farmers. I had heard rumours that one of the barns on their site contained some more farm machinery along with 3 double-decker vintage buses. Having investigated on Friday afternoon, I can confirm it contains A LOT. Probably as much as I have found on the rest of the farm put together. So with just over 1 week of my internship to go, I say ‘bring it on!’

To conclude, the project is going brilliantly and I am having way too much fun!

https://www.riverford.co.uk/pet

https://www.sacrewell.org.uk/

 

Will you Marrow me?

Halfway through my internship with the Anthony Nolan Team. I’m surprised how quickly I got used to working here! Got used to my desk, colleagues and places for lunch around.

So what am I actually doing in the office?

My first week was focused around inductions, so meetings with different teams. Anthony Nolan hires around 350 people. It may seem quite a lot as for a charity. It is not. Individual teams are small, thus, let’s say ‘Politics and Public Affairs’ in Register Development counts only 4 people. They deal with everything connected to MPs, affairs connected to stem cells, blood cancer etc. This year they’ve put extreme amount of work to change government’s attitude towards second transplants. Successfully! Another example – communication team. Again, just a few people. They talk with patients and donors, make interviews, write stories – they are constantly on their phones. They get close with some patients, follow the most emotional stories of donors, organise campaigns. I had a pleasure to be a part of one of them- we are targeting young people and BAME to join the register. We made a photo-shoot that was promoting the idea of students donating stem cells. Another team- studio. They are incredible. And their computers are incredible too. They are the designers, producing anything connected to graphics. I am creating an interactive map with them at the moment, which is meant to help the whole office navigate between different regional managers.

Last Friday I had a pleasure to participate in the ‘Summer in the City’ festival with AN team. That was my first recruitment event and my first recruited donors. It is actually an amazing feeling to sign up the form of someone who thanks to you decided to be a potential lifesaver. You honestly feel like a hero. Summer in the City is the biggest YouTube festival in the UK, so… that was a fun day at work ;). I’ve then learnt a lot about the donations and processing donors’ data with the Operation Team, where we analyse all the forms and correct the mistakes.

My favourite projects so far were: organising the Away Day, planning a team trip to Barcelona for the International RAG conference, creating a presentation for Marrow AGM. Although each of them took loads of time, me staring at the computer screen for hours and replying to tons of emails,  submitting the reports to my coordinator was really rewarding.

Fun facts about office life. Everyday there’s something to celebrate. Either someone is going for a maternity leave, or someone has birthday, or someone is getting married. There is a cake everyday. I am not kidding. Sometimes when there isn’t anything particular happening, the team gathers for ‘High Fives’ – they share their new achievements, give each other high fives and … eat cake. Can’t complain. We have an hour break for lunch everyday. People pair up or go in groups to different places and wherever we go they know their tricks (10% discount for our office in one place, 50% discount on Tuesdays in the other place…). I am working, but I am also having an amazing time.

 

Au Revoir

I concluded my 4 weeks at Full Fact a few days back, and as cliche as it sounds, I had enjoyed every minute – including the daily bus commute – of it.

We had built on my predecessor’s work, integrating together the three different stages of the automated factchecking process that we had decided on. Though 4 weeks isn’t a long period of time – considering that Imperial’s academic terms are 11 weeks long (from week 0 – yes, week 0 – through week 10) – it was interesting to see how our project had developed from start to finish.

The ‘strong and stable’ bridge which I had mentioned in my previous post(s) was crucial in integrating the first and third stage of the automated factchecking process. Crucial communication was key in this area. I needed to know what my comrade’s outputs (in terms of Five Year Plans) from the first stage were. This stage involved using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to parse the key terms in a sentence, and my comrade and I saw eye-to-eye – surprising given that he’s a head taller than me – on the key terms that the NLP programme should extract.

Up next were the outcomes from the third (and last) stage. After several daily discussions, we were on the same frequency – 60.231 Hertz to be exact – regarding the output for this stage. We decided on returning a dictionary – not the Merriam-Webster type, but rather of Pythonic form – of data relevant to the claim. For example, the relevant data for the claim ‘GDP rose in 2015’ would be the absolute GDP in 2014 and 2015, as well as the resulting percentage increase.

We had fine-tuned the factchecking process for several of the more common claims involving ‘GDP’, although more work needs to be done (especially on the NLP end) for more complicated claims, such as, ‘GDP growth during the Thatcher years wasn’t as good as it was during Cameron’s time.’ Also, this has to be scaled to other topics, such as inflation, immigration etc., although many of the common claims in these different areas have the same sentence structure. For example, ‘GDP grew in 2015’ and ‘Inflation rose in 2015’ could be interpreted in a similar way.

Why not join Team Up yourself?

Sadly, my time at Team Up has come to an end. I successfully completed the progress and baseline assessments mentioned previously and started the long process of updating the lesson materials. This involved mapping the lessons to the key learning points on the syllabus and finding example exam-style questions for each lesson. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to implement many of the changes I identified. However, whoever takes over the task in the future has a set of detailed notes and instructions regarding what changes need to be made.

I learned a lot from my time at Team Up: I experienced working in an office environment, I worked collaboratively in a small team and individually towards the end of the internship. I learned about the day-to-day running of a small charity. I was assigned a single task to work on throughout my time at the office, however many of the other employees have very varied roles and responsibilities. You have to be very flexible and open-minded to work in this environment, as well as realistic about what you are able to achieve and when you have taken on too much work.

I am looking forward to continuing to work with Team Up throughout the coming academic year. Unfortunately, I have to wait until my timetable comes through to see if it allows me to sign up for a tuition session in a school. But, if this doesn’t work, I will continue my engagement as Chair of Imperial’s Team Up society!

If you think that you could share your knowledge and experience with students from disadvantaged backgrounds, why not join Team Up yourself? Opportunities are posted on their website or come and visit us at Fresher’s Fair!

Candle in the Wind

My last week at Nesta. Queue the classic “Time flies!” and “It feels like it was only yesterday when I arrived” and “We’re all going to die someday” clichés. It was a week of many “lasts”: the last catch-up with my supervisor, my last lunch with the interns, the last time I logged into my Nesta email, the last time I had a glass of water at the office… Okay, I’m getting too nostalgic.

The end of my internship consisted of me scrambling about trying to finish up all the little projects I’d been doing over the past month. It was both satisfying and sad (and stressful) adding the finishing touches to my reports with the tight deadline of Friday afternoon, which kept inching closer. Despite this, I still had the chance to have a few last coffees with some colleagues and get some last minute life advice. Oh, and I also received a visit by Jessica Noon of the Careers Office, to chat about my experience and to show off the coolest office ever.

LIES! But good lies.

My last proper act as a Nesta intern was supposed to be a meeting with the other interns to discuss the internship process; an informal reunion to just bounce ideas off of each other. Little did I know it was all a ruse to get me to a room where I was greeted by all the people in the Policy & Research team for a small goodbye party. It was very sweet and unexpected, and I even got to give a little thank you speech. But the sweetest thing of all was the blueberry tart cake they bought for the occasion. These people know how to make an intern happy!

Working at Nesta has been an eye-opener for me. 4 weeks ago, I knew pretty much nothing of the world of policy-making and innovation, and now I’m subscribed to at least a dozen newsletters on the topic.  It has shown me that there are so many fascinating projects going on around us that we don’t hear about unless it’s related to our line of work, and we should put more effort into discovering and understanding them. I’ve learnt that working in the world of policy research is fascinating, but most importantly I’ve met people with amazing stories and unique perspectives on the world. And of course, my fancy political small talk has really upped its game.

 

Thank you for having me, Nesta, and thank you Charity Insights for making it happen.

 

Highlight of the week: The proper answer should be “All the experiences I’ve lived and all the things I’ve learned over my time at Nesta.” But really, it’s the blueberry tart cake.

A dream for a better Healthcare system

The first two weeks have flown by at Healthwatch Bolton and I’m happy to say that I’ve managed to settle myself on a desk space that is usually free. In this time, I’ve been reborn as a coffee gremlin. It really doesn’t help when there is a funky coffee shop right around the corner!

In the office, I’ve hopped from desk to desk to shadow the in-house community engagement officers and research officers. Developing my understanding of research at collection and analysis was essential for me to start designing a project plan.

On my third day in the office, a visit to the BRASS (Befriending Refugees and Asylum Seekers) Bolton Centre and a review of past case notes captured my attention towards the under-represented and growing refugee population in the Bolton borough. Furthermore, in the past year the borough welcomed 255 refugees from countries including Somalia, Sudan and Congo. This equates to 34 per cent of the total that came to the UK under the Gateway Protection Programme. Realising the cultural and language barriers that may hinder the data collection of this research, I attached myself to the engagement officers who filled me in with their tips and tricks for spontaneous rapport building.

Despite the odd tricky encounter, I’ve loved every moment of my time at BRASS. Almost immediately, I felt at home with my new friends. Not only have people felt comfortable enough to share their deepest concerns and health problems, many have been supportive of my project and some have repeatedly asked me to return and spend more time with them.

Health and social care research is harder than it seems; but the mitigating factor for me is to see the miraculous job of fantastic service providers.

Drop4Drop the good times don’t stop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Last Days at the K&C Foundation

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking into a vicarage, chatting with Yorkshire-folk and walking a dog

My internship so far has consisted of three days spent in Bedale, and seven days work at home. Firstly, it was important that I fully understood what was required of me by St Gregory’s Church and the community. The Church is undergoing a huge redevelopment program, with an aim to make the space more versatile. My roles are the following:

  • Design a new wordpress based website, with a heritage section allowing interactive ‘drone-eye’ exploration of the grounds
  • Design websites for three charities working in the town, namely: a foodbank, debt advice service and bereavement befriending service
  • Write document for Church of England proposing technology installations to the interior of The Church. Full WiFi coverage, and retracting projector screens. Will allow the space to be used for public speaking, music performances, rehearsals etc. It is very important that the technology installations are discrete so as not to detract from the cultural authenticity of the building.

I met with a number of committee members, to try to understand what is desired from a new website. There is a resounding fear of change, many of the committee feeling uncomfortable about the idea of new technology. Many have been with the church for a very long time, but it’s important that the facilities can be enjoyed not only by long term users, but new visitors.

The current progress on the website can be seen at http://45.32.180.144/. Most of the structure is built, with a few bugs needing squashing still. Before this project my web design knowledge was very basic, but I followed this course: https://internetingishard.com/html-and-css/ which has been fantastic. A few days later I had a very good grounding in CSS styling, and could apply these skills to customising the chosen wordpress theme with my own design elements. The other challenge has been hosting the website. Rather than paying for a packaged solution on a shared server (easy to set up, but limited with functionality) I chose to use a virtual hosted server. This allows shell access to the server meaning I’m not in anyway limited with functionality of a typical ‘wordpress server’, and I can make quick fixes through SSH when I accidentally break the whole website with some dodgy PHP code.

I used my drone along with my handheld camera to capture the shots for the video at the top of the homepage. The full video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtqVnX-dTCw. I’d never flown the drone inside before, and having one-of-a-kind artefacts within inches of the blades wasn’t the safest introduction either. I’m delighted with the results, especially the shot which pulls backwards from the stained glass through the middle of the church.

Going forward, I need to finish adding the content from the old church website to the new one. Then, I need to learn how I can create an interactive heritage section, with an interactive drone fly around app. I need to write the technology installation proposal for the Church of England, and build the charity websites. I’m confident I can finish all this on schedule, and will be back to Bedale for a couple more days to meet with the charity leadership teams to discuss their requirements.

Below are some photos from my adventures

I stayed with the rector and his wife (family friends). The rector accidentally locked us out of the house, so I used my ladder skills to save the day
Walking the rector’s dog ‘Oswald’, he doesn’t like walks
The town of Bedale, taken from the drone
St Gregory’s Church. The grounds are extensive and continue into the trees and beyond.

My first day at Surfers Against Sewage

Today I started my internship at Surfers Against Sewage, a Cornwall based charity focused on improving UK water quality and the reduction of single use plastics, as well as broader issues such as marine conservation and climate change.

Having just launched their new project ‘Plastic free Coastlines’, a positive response to an accumulation of plastics with an area of 5x the size of the UK (newly branded ‘Wasteland‘), there is a vibrant and energetic atmosphere in the office. The project aims to engage communities and businesses in the problems that Wasteland is creating, and provides a free action plan, inspiring you to ‘join the resistance’. I’ll be tasked with public engagement at the infamous Boardmasters festival next week, hoping to collect , collate and report on data from the public, and signing up as many people as possible to this effective response to a very important issue. I’ll also be helping co-ordinate large scale beach cleans at the festival, all to come next week.

Today, though, I was tasked with an entirely different project. Ellie, (a member of the SAS team) is leading ‘Be the Change’, a new education programme which aims to inform primary schools about litter via interactive workshops. With the charity growing at a rapid rate in recent years, last year the project extended outside of Cornwall and reached Birmingham and Essex. This year, they aim to engage with schools in all areas of the UK. This required thorough research into primary schools in areas such as Newcastle. I researched all registered primary schools in Newcastle, and subsequently created a spreadsheet with contact information including social media links and important names, hoping that this will provide an easy platform for the charity to work from when it comes to engaging in communities that they haven’t reached yet. Out of the 75 schools, we hope to confirm and finalise a minimum of 5 physical tours to schools in Newcastle, with of course many more to other parts of the UK. ‘Hard to reach areas’ such as Northern Ireland and all UK islands will be engaged via online interactive talks and podcasts to ensure no one is left out.

I’ve also got a couple more projects to balance in the coming weeks, one involving a re-mapping of a nationwide map on the SAS website to smaller scale regional maps, hopefully allowing me to use my GIS mapping skills learnt during my geology degree. The other involves me helping with the launch of the ever-growing Beach Clean Box Communities project, providing physical boxes for coastal communities to utilise. More to come on these!!

Overall a fun day and a great crew. Excited for the rest to come!