Blog posts

Clock ticking ever closer…

I’m currently sitting in a café in Vauxhall, counting down the minutes until I start my placement at the Big Issue Foundation. The pre-first day nerves setting my mind to run wild, publishing my first post to the blog seemed like a welcome distraction…

I imagine most of you will recognize the Big Issue. Having thousands of vendors on streets across the UK each week have turned it into one of the country’s most trusted and recognizable social enterprise brands. What you might not know is that it’s actually split into three arms: the magazine, the foundation and the social investment vehicle.

2nd Week at DWT

I have been continuing work on the user guide, this week focusing on producing case studies from Living Landscapes and NIAs, where the use of GIS maps would help. Living Landscapes is a nation wide project, created by the Wildlife Trusts, that aims to restore, recreate and reconnect habitats o support  native wildlife. This will give species more space to move between patches, increasing their chances of adapting to threats such as climate change. The point of this part of the document is to allow people who would potentially use the maps (trust staff, housing planners etc.) to see how GIS maps would benefit their project.

Week One at Royal Society Publishing

This week I started my Charity Insights internship at the publishing office of Royal Society. I’m sure that most of you will have at least heard of the Royal Society (if not, here’s the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society for a quick blurb) It’s the oldest scientific academy still in existence and I ended up there because I’m interested in the work they do in communicating science and emphasizing the cultural role that science has to play in society.  Oh and because I wanted to get a taste of academic publishing and their publishing division just happen to bring out some great journals!

Visit to Idea

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.

The final ACT! (maybe)

I had my last day at ACT! on Friday (and woke up pretty hungover on Saturday). I finished my project and discussed it with Charles – he seemed pleased with my work which was a relief. My framework for city ‘greening’ will be put together with a number of other parallel projects (focusing on energy, transport or land taxation for example) to build up a complete sustainable city model. With Bristol crowned European Green Capital 2015 the city has a lot to achieve ‘greening-wise’ in the next two years – so who knows, hopefully our sustainable city model will come to some use in Bristol…

I’m sad to leave Bristol, it’s such a lively and striking city, and I was so lucky with the weather – I spent many evenings on the Clifton Downs with some of my colleges from ACT!

Untitled

This is a photo of the library that LUCIA built at Saria – I fundraised for it last year (my school raised £5000 in a term) and I’m reviewing the project now as part of a grant proposal for a girls’ toilet block and handwash station on the same site.

Unfortunately there’s been a bit of an issue with the stoves project, so I’ve shifted my research focus into Bees! Ethiopia produces about 40000 tonnes of honey a year, and we’re looking into developing a bee project of sorts to help communities make money. I’ve got no experience with bees – so I’ve been doing a huge amount of product analysis, reading papers and reports and budgets for the different kinds of beehives (who knew you there were so many different types of beehive!?),

Of meetings and speeches

I’ve just come out of a meeting that I arranged with a local ‘Green Business Advisor’ and an ‘Ethical Business Coach’. We discussed issues around green infrastructure, general ‘green’ practice in businesses and their experiences working in Bristol. It was good to get some first hand, local expertise and heartening to see two old guys still passionate about what they do. They also told me about some interesting examples that I might use as case studies in my project.

I’m now well underway with writing up my project – a framework for the further ‘greening’ of UK cities. Sure enough, my preparatory research was not enough and I’ve been finding out more and more as I’ve been writing (I came across a speech by Iolo Williams which is the best, most moving speech that I’ve ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnJQjtvngqA

A New Farm

So on Wednesday I submitted the memorandum of understanding for my first project.

I didn’t do a lot of work on this one, but I took it over because it was convenient and I’m waiting on a reply from our people in Ethiopia before I can go on with the stoves and wash-station one.

Basically, we wanted to build a farm at the Saria Kebele Primary School in Amhara, Ethiopia. This is all well and good – but how is it going to work? Our contact in Ethiopia had put together a budget and a proposal for us, and I had to go through it and put it into a Memorandum of Understanding (basically, the sort of contract that NGOs use).

1st Week at DWT

Last week I started my internship at Durham Wildlife Trust (DWT). I’ve always had a love for nature but it is only recently that I have thought about working for a conservation charity. At the trust, I am working on a project concerning GIS maps of ecosystem services. GIS maps are a relatively recent development in ecology and aim to map ecosystem service demand and supply. This information can then be used to identify areas that provide valuable services and should therefore be conserved, but also “gaps” or areas where there is demand for a service but supply could be improved.

Mingling with Bristol’s greenies

I’ve recently been to the monthly Bristol Green Mingle with Charles and Fi. It was the first time I’d been to a mingle and I didn’t know quite what to expect – but unsurprisingly, it was just people (specifically Bristol’s greenies) drinking, eating and chatting. I met an interesting mix of people including local MPs, an ecologist and the director of the Bristol Green Capital initiative (who’s become a local hero after Bristol won the European Green Capital Award earlier this year). As well as being an enjoyable, relaxed and interesting evening it was also very useful – I gained a few handy contacts who seemed to know something (if not a lot) relevant to my internship project.