Projects « Forward 25 Careers CIC

Not in employment or self-employment

On February 6, 2012 / Careers, I am Exeter, I am Awesome!, Projects / Leave a comment

Under 25 years old or older, unemployment can hit hard.

It is especially poignant when unemployment leads to having to register on job seekers allowance. We hear it as the millions, and in Exeter, the number sits at around 2,186 and 10,196 for Devon (December 2011 data). We can empathise with the difficult state of the labour market and how job creation has slowed down. Take a moment, because the reality is that this is affecting individuals, their home in many cases, and their mental well-being. This is about individuals who are in some ways like you and me.

The truth is that it can happen to any of us. The young and older people we meet have had different life situations affect their ability to enter or stay in the job market from health, bereavement, dyslexia, complex family situations, becoming a carer, or leaving the care system and other factors that somehow feels like a situation any of us could find ourselves or our children in, if our good fortunes and health somehow took a different turn.

If this feels personal, it is meant to. We, at Forward 25, meet some great people and talents who shine in the right setting and context. They have all wanted to do a great job and know that they have contributed something worthwhile. We sometimes talk to people who say, but if they prioritise the right things, then, they will have money spare. Whilst on job seekers allowance, poverty can be real and constant. This, with a few pounds spent here and there, turns into pennies.

Forward 25 are working with unemployed young and older people providing workspaces, assistance with job applications, and helping to keep motivation high. that is just one way, and our way. So, what we ask is that next time you see the unemployment figures, the news on the millions or the thousands, think that somebody round the corner deserves a chance and start to work out what you can do to help them find their way to their good fortune.

Come to the Launch48 weekend in Exeter – March 2012

On January 28, 2012 / Careers, I am Exeter, I am Awesome!, Projects / Leave a comment

We are very excited to partner with Launch48 to bring a great weekend of fun, startups and all thing web and mobile to the South West. We think the weekend is a little addictive, once you attend one of these events, the people, the ideas, and the way the weekend works out just makes it an awesome experience.

What’s so special about it?
It starts with people pitching their business ideas, teams coming together to build it and a presentation on Sunday evening. The business ideas can range from the purely commercial “I have always had this idea and now I would like you all as a team to help me build it” to plain fun ideas that just brings some people together to try out something new. If you want to truly understand how random the ideas and products can be, just check out the names of the teams. Examples include Espionage, tripstogether, eatinthestreet, ridemagnet, weteach.us, locongo, and happy tribe.

And then…
Teams form and the work begins. In between generating ideas, looking into the detail, and then starting to prototype or build, you get board meetings that help you shape the business side. You discuss how feasible it is and how exactly it is going to work. Then you have the mentors that pop round and share their experiences, give tips, solutions, challenge your ideas. You can even test out an idea that you may not have pitched but may be working on yourself, and they will give you time and listen.

Who is it for?

With the Launch48 weekend, not everyone needs to be a developer or a budding entrepreneur! Just pure interest in tech-based business whether it is web, facebook, or mobile is enough to make you a valuable part of the team. We all know that building an online business is about more than just the platform and code itself, it is about the sales, marketing, design, finance, and most of all – great ideas and angles, and you work on all that throughout the weekend. There is guidance all the way, people to ask if you feel stuck and the best thing is that no one says why the hell did you not know that already.

Who do you meet?

The level of networking is something that cannot be missed out, there is a buzz with new ideas and you really get into making it work. You meet people who are simply curious to those who are seriously knowledgeable about startups. This means that you get to hear those little tips, tricks and trade secrets. You get to meet people, who say, if you get stuck on that idea of yours, get in touch, I will help you out. How often does that happen in a networking event?

You get stuff done and make real progress. It is amazing to see how much can be achieved in one weekend, and the organisers work very hard to make sure that all the angles are covered.

So to wrap up..

Teams, ideas, and real buzz for tech startups all in one weekend. This is the first time that Launch48 have come to Exeter and we will be hosting this at the Innovation Centre at the University of Exeter Campus. There’s lots to learn and a lot to give whatever your skill level and background. You see the process of getting a startup off the ground from start to delivery, make some great friends, and possibly find yourself in a startup team that runs with the idea after the weekend.

We are really looking forward to the coming weekend, it is a great opportunity for all those with ideas, and curiosity about tech startups in the South West of England to get involved. Book your tickets, find out more and we look forward to meeting you at the Innovation Centre, University of Exeter Campus at 6pm on Friday the 2nd of March 2012.

There are discounted prices for students, early bird tickets and talk to us (01392 580525) if you need to book group tickets.

Computer Based Math Education Summit

On November 11, 2011 / Projects / Leave a comment

Taking place over two days, the Computer Based Math Education Summit in London has a mixed audience of teachers and those who are participating in STEM and looking to contribute to the educational system either through curriculum or resource development. The discussions have gone from looking at what computer based math is about and what young people need. Clearly, there are many different ways to make this a reality, but the reality is that it needs to fit in with current levels of knowledge and confidence at teacher and institution level to implement this in school. There were great points raised including whether or not there should be two levels of math just as there is for English and that it should not be acceptable to say ‘I cannot do math’ in society today as we can all do math.

Participating in the panel discussion on Engaging the Disenfranchised with CBM, the workspaces & projects pilot was presented highlighting our current goals which is to open up the project to students and teachers. It was noted that disenfranchised young people whether it is because of social circumstances or other reasons need to be considered in this debate. However, it was clear from the excellent projects highlighted by Kyle McCormick, Deborah Donnelly-McLay, Bruce Dickson and also out project, that we need to get over some hurdles such as:
1. the approach appears to be small scale and difficult to transfer to an education system wide solution
2. peer to peer by young people, STEM ambassadors and employees willing to participate and individuals such as “Mobile Silver Partners” put forward through the brilliant project carried out by Bruce shows that there is an opportunity to manage the one-to-one through community engagement
3. it is the personalised approach that is getting through, how can that be sustainable as it will clearly seem like a luxury especially in the current climate and most definitely for some countries.

The discussion continues for another day, and there is clearly no one answer that will solve these issues. We have definitely got a long way to go, but what has been highlighted is that it is certainly possible at grassroots level to engage the disenfranchised and we now need to work with that to get to the next stage.

Check out the twitter stream on ‘computermath’.

Celebrating the 7 billion

On October 31, 2011 / I am Exeter, I am Awesome!, Projects / Leave a comment

Some facts as we celebrate the world population reaching 7 billion. This was put together by Martin who is currently completing projects with Shilhay and University of Exeter/Poltimore House.

1 billion

Reached in 1804

China and India are the only two countries with a population of over 1 billion at 1,346,500,000 and 1,210,193,420 respectively.
The total population of Africa rose above 1 billion in 2010.
More than 1 billion people worldwide now use social networking sites.

2 billion

Reached in 1927

There are nearly 2 billion people living in absolute poverty although this number is dropping.
Nearly 2 billion people worldwide are now overweight.
More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of Prince William and Princess Catherine.

3 billion

Reached in 1960

3 billion people are under 25 years old.

3 billion people now use the internet, with a total of nearly 15 billion individual network connections worldwide.

3 billion people rely on rice as their staple diet and more than 500 million tonnes of rice is produced each year.

4 billion

Reached in 1975

The total population of Asia in 2011 is over 4,140,336,500 (over 60% of the world’s population).

4 billion people worldwide do not use toilet paper.

About 4 billion people follower an Abrahamic religion, including Christianity (2.2 billion), Islam (1.6 billion) and Judaism (18 million).

5 billion

Reached on 11 July 1987

Over 5 billion people now own a mobile phone.

The amount of people which the earth’s resources can reasonably support is about 5 billion.

It is estimated that about 5 billion people worldwide suffer from tooth decay.

6 billion

Reached on 12 October 1999

The population of the Northern hemisphere is about 90% of the world’s total (around 6 billion).

The Northern hemisphere contains 67% of the Earth’s land as well as most of the largest cities and areas of highest population density.

There are 6 billion right-handed people in the world.

7 billion

Reached on 31 October 2011

Some believe the population of the world before the biblical “great flood” was over 7 billion.

If stood shoulder to shoulder we would reach around the globe 87 times, although we could all fit on the island of Cyprus.

The population of the world today is about 6% of the estimated number of people who have ever lived (about 115 billion).

Wikipedia entry for the UNFPA Report

On August 15, 2011 / Projects, Promoting Careers / Leave a comment

One of the projects that we have been working on is to increase the dissemination of the State of the World’s Midwifery Report findings online and reach different audiences. This work was carried out in collaboration with Tangerine Bee and supported by the Forward 25 Careers workspaces project. Here is a brief overview from Natalie who has been working on this project.

As a result of the State of the World’s Midwifery report, there were country specific documents for the the 58 countries. These would be useful data to upload to Wikipedia in an attempt to heighten awareness by linking to the SoWMy report. In line with the content that can be found on the health pages at country level in Wikipedia, specific data relating to maternal mortality rate and other key indicators were highlighted as content for publication purposes including the maternal mortality rate for 2010, 2008 and 1990; under 5 mortality rate, the neonatal mortality rate as a percentage of under 5′s; number of midwives per 1000 births and lifetime risk of maternal death. We developed statements that could hold the relevant information for each country and also link to the report.

Background
Wikipedia is organised in sections and each country has its own Wikipedia page, for example see Malawi. Some country pages already have information about maternal and child mortality rates. Most of the figures already mentioned were out-dated so needed updating with the 2010 figures from the report. Our aim was to include this paragraph on the main page for each country, but discovered that the majority of countries have a specific page for highlighting health statistics, for example see Health in Afghanistan. Where these sub-pages existed and a direct link existed from the main page to the sub-page, the paragraph was inserted within the relevant area. If you now search for State of the World’s Midwifery, you now get a great spread of information across countries (see searching wikipedia). By completing this project, we have also been able to impact on the google search optimisation for the report specifically for a country (for example, State of the World’s Midiwfery Tanzania brings the Wikipedia entries to number 5 ont he first page) and a search for ‘Midwifery Tanzania’ brings the information from Wikipedia to Page 2 (see wikipedia). With this type of impact, we hope to assist with the wider dissemination of the report findings and improve general understanding of the issues facing midwifery as published through the report.

Process
Wikipedia requires a user-name and login prior to making amendments to the published text. When uploading a paragraph, it is possible to highlight certain words to link to their specific Wikipedia entry, such as the United Nations Population Fund and Millennium Development Goals. As this is a way to promote to SoWMy Report, the text ‘State of the World’s Midwifery’ was linked directly to the report website, as well as additional links to UNPFA and MDG Indicators website in the ‘External Links’ section. However, due to recommendations from the Wikipedia Editors, the report link placed in each country page or health sub-section was linked directly to the country profile pdf link per country. This could only be included on ‘Health in….’ pages as the Country Profile related to midwifery is not specific enough to the knowledge of a country as a whole. On certain countries Wikipedia page the entire paragraph was deleted. This was due to the page already being recognised as a ‘good article’, they felt no further information was needed.

Recommendations for future updates for Wikipedia
As Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, any mistakes made can be deleted by anyone with no notification or explanation, which happened on this project on a few occasions. Therefore, it is recommended that regular maintenance takes place. However, editors are also overseeing changes, therefore, it may be possible for other authors and editors to also make corrections as required.

Another problem we encountered was that because we were editing 58 pages in a short amount of time it could have been considered ‘spamming’ by certain website editors and we were warned by one to confirm that we were not ‘vandalising’ certain Wikipedia pages.

When researching the different country’s Wikipedia pages, we needed to establish how to get the information out to as many people as possible. We found that although a lot of the countries involved had specific ‘Health in…’sections, some of them had clearly been neglected and weren’t informative or concise. Where this was the case, we included the paragraph on their main Wikipedia page, linked to the UNFPA and MDG Wiki articles and left out the external links.

The ideal next step will be to complete a Wikipedia page on The State of the World’s Midwifery report. This will enable all the countries to have a direct link to the page, which will give them an overview of the report and link externally to the stateoftheworldsmidwifery.com website.

Midwifery app creation – Exeter from Ross Gill on Vimeo.

Because we all have it in us

On August 15, 2011 / Careers, Projects / Leave a comment

It’s no different for most of us regardless of age,
we fear the phone ringing to tell us that we have not got the dream job that we want,
we put off asking those who have declined our application what the reason was,
when we keep getting no responses for our efforts, we learn to think that it is always going to be that way,
we feel hurt when someone tells us that there was something we did not get quite right,
and looking past our current misfortunes seems near impossible.

Every application and every letter is hard work,
easier to put off or simply seems impossible to fit in to our daily schedule,
and even when we have finished, pressing the send button takes a lot of courage.

So when they do, the young people who look to us as they make their next move,
just spare an extra moment,
because they are no different to most of us trying to step into a new world.

A couple of small things can make a difference

If someone writes to you or your company asking for work experience, please reply back. Even if it is a standard answer that says here is something that will help you, but we cannot provide work experience at the moment;
If you cannot provide work experience, offer the next best thing that is possible, a chat over coffee, a telephone conversation, a one-day shadowing experience. If it is just a meeting that they can sit and watch in the corner, it is amazing how much they can take away from things that you take for granted.

Just think about it, because one in five young people and more if you count the adult world that needs to experience the workplace in a way that helps them move forward.

Notes:
Forward 25 works with young people aspiring to enter the knowledge industry but may be currently unemployed or disadvantaged in some way. We provide workspaces and projects, usually in collaboration with other organisations to ensure that they gain experiences and fill their portfolios in order to help them gain momentum in seeking their ideal job roles. If you can offer projects, mentoring, or support through donations, please get in touch to rupa@forward25.com or phone +44 (0)7908 766971.

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