23/3 - Feedback and Finalising

My final day in Changing Lives' central office was spent promoting the work I have created over the past few weeks to the public through the charity's social media accounts.

First, I edited some of the infographics I had created earlier this week to make them social media-friendly; summarising the message of the infographic into bitesize snippets of text, and converting the images to jpgs, for example. I used my initiative to select just 5 pieces of information out of the mass of statistics I have collected over the past two weeks, basing my selection on two things: which statistics were most impressive and most representative of the impact the charity has had this past year, and also which infographics were most aesthetically attractive.

I then drafted Twitter and Facebook posts to accompany the first image (see below), before accessing an admin account of these pages to post them. To ensure followers of these pages aren't bombarded with statistics, I scheduled the next post to be released online later on in the day, with a few hours' gap in between posts. The remaining 3 infographics have been scheduled to come out on Thursday and Friday. I understand that to maintain their professionalism, these pages must not become 'spammy'; this not only looks amateur-ish, it also makes followers of these social media accounts more likely to unfollow the accounts to avoid their timelines being clogged up by posts that aren't relevant to them. 

Once I had scheduled my remaining social media posts, I went back over my impact report for a final proofread, before then editing the draft blog post I created yesterday. I also sent this to Rhiannon for her approval, and we have decided that this post will be posted on the charity's website in the next few weeks, from Stephen Bell (CEO), as he is the voice and face of the charity to the general public and so the successes of the charity that are detailed in the post, as well as the references to the pertinent challenges the charity faces in the next 5 years owing to government cuts etc,  will resonate with the public more clearly and hopefully inspire more people to spread the word about the charity.

I had scheduled a meeting with Rhiannon for this afternoon to review my time with Changing Lives. We discussed the various aspects of Communications I had utilised during my project - design work, writing, research, and social media - and how this overall package has provided me with the skill-set to enter a sector similar to this following graduation. We also discussed the future of the product I have created; it will hopefully be released to the public in the next few months, once the financial year has ended and any stats that need updating have been amended. It will also be sent out to outreach projects so they can share the impact of the charity as a whole with visitors to their services, and be referred to at the annual meeting, where all staff members of the organisation will be able to read it. 

Overall, I feel that this placement has helped me develop numerous employability skills: I now feel more confident in using my own initiative when it comes to completing projects, as at many times in my placement Rhiannon simply wasn't available for me to check things over with her, or to ask what she would like me to do next, because of meetings and more important deadlines she was working towards in her job role; I am better equipped dealing with people in positions of authority in a professional manner, as I have encountered accommodation managers, executive directors and even had a chat with the CEO of the charity while I have been working in head office; finally, my comprehension skills have been utilised to take in a mass of information from multiple sources, which then informed my writing and design-work when creating the impact report. I have received comments from the Grants Team and Executive Director regarding the usefulness of the product I have created for them in not only informing the public about the charity, but also condensing all that the charity does into a compact resource for staff members to refer to and learn about sectors of the company they are not involved in first-hand. My ability to express all of the complex sectors of the charity was helped by my experiences with the outreach teams on Thursday and Friday of last week. 

My time at Changing Lives has sparked an interest in the field of Communications and PR that I had previously not considered. I now know that I already have a foundation skill-set that would help me in an entry-level position in this field and the ability to complete tasks in this field efficiently and professionally, as proved by my progress in creating the impact report. I have found the tasks set to me during these two weeks similar to tasks I have completed in the field of journalism and publishing in prior work experience, and as this was the field I planned on entering following my graduation, I would happily look for and apply to jobs within communications in the future.

Draft blog post:

The end of the current financial year marks a new beginning for Changing Lives, and sees us reflect on what we, and our service users, have achieved in the past year, as well as reflecting on our aspirations for the next five years.

Looking back to 2010-11, the rate of growth the charity has experienced in all aspects is remarkable. And to mark this expansion, we even changed our name. Our annual income has more than doubled in this period, growing from approximately £6m to £15m. This additional revenue has went straight back into our services, ensuring more people than ever, in a larger radius than ever, are having their lives changed by us. 

 This year, we have:

- Had 338 staff supporting 16,051 clients as they took the first steps to gaining housing, overcoming addiction and entering the workplace

- Completed the renovation of our 100th home in the Homelife project, providing independent tenancies for our service users

- Helped 300 more people than last year in our employment services, watching them gain the skills and confidence to enter the workplace

- Been shortlisted in the Heart of the Community category at the 2016 North East Business Awards

- Received 26,521 hours of time from our amazing volunteers, helping in all sectors of our organisation, worth over £200,000 (based on the living wage)

In short, we achieved a lot, and we’re proud of it. Yet, we are still anxious about the year ahead and beyond. We currently receive over half of our income through Housing Related Support and Addiction services, both of which are facing up to 60% cuts over the next five years. We need to futureproof our charity to ensure we can continue offering the fantastic range of support we do now for years to come. 

This can, and will, be achieved through our strengthened fundraising plans. The second half of 2016 is already jam-packed with exciting fundraising events, such as the Great North Run.  All of our fundraising efforts will be in line with our new ethical policy. The demonization of the charity sector in the media over the past few years has inspired us to break away from fundraising tactics adopted by other national charities: we will not be chugging on the high street, for example. 

Following the success of the Homelife project, we are on track to reach our target of 500 completed properties by 2020, housing over 1000 people and generating £2.3m rental income to go back into funding our services. This growth will also allow us to employ more service users than ever, whether that be full-time or on a work placement basis, providing them with the employability skills to stand on their own two feet. 

None of these aspirations will be possible without the growth of our volunteer sector. As well as increasing our staff numbers to 600 in the next five years, we aim to encourage more volunteers than ever before to help Changing Lives, totalling 100,000 hours of volunteered hours per year. We also need to thank the staff and volunteers who have made all of our achievements this year possible. 

Together, we have, and will continue to, change lives. 

22/3/16 - Presenting To The Public

Today I sought the advice of the Grants Team at Changing Lives to improve my draft impact report. As the sector of the business who will benefit most from the project, I have constantly had their work in mind when creating the product.

I emailed a pdf version of the report to Steph from the Grants Team, who offered some helpful criticism in my re-drafting process. The women’s services available from Changing Lives includes a project that works with male sex workers and men who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation: this is called MAP (Male Action Project) and runs alongside GAP, the service I visited on Friday.  In my initial draft of the report I had left this project out of the Women’s Services section as I wasn’t too confident on the details of the project and thus felt it didn’t fit in with the section I had created. However, following my discussion with Steph I have made room to include a little bit about MAP alongside my discussion on GAP to ensure the true nature of the services Changing Lives offers is represented.

Once I was happy with the impact report, I sent it to Jo Curry, the Executive Director of Communications and Policy at Changing Lives. I am expecting feedback from her regarding my work either tomorrow or Thursday.

In the meantime, I have created a separate infographic poster to represent the company (see below). This can be used either alongside the report or instead of, to demonstrate in visual terms the impact the charity has had on its service users in the past financial year.

I ensured the poster was high quality, uniform with previous literature from the charity (including my report) and selected the statistics that stood out most to me personally when learning about the company. I feel this was an effective way to decide what facts went on the infographic as the people consuming this poster are more likely to be people unaware of the charity, or people who know very little of the work the charity does, like I was before this placement. The impact report is more rooted in complicated stats and goes into detail about what specific projects have achieved as the target audience of the report differs to the infographic: the people who read the report are more likely to be stakeholders etc.

I then went on to create a blog post for publication on the charity’s website to accompany the infographic and impact report. The online presence of Changing Lives isn’t very strong at the moment, something which I believe is holding it back in its reach to the general public. Digital media is the fastest way to impact and communicate with people, and I hope that by devising a blog post which presents the work of the report in a more casual, condensed way, more people than ever will hear about the way the charity is Changing Lives.

I plan to also create Facebook and Twitter posts to promote the impact report and this blog post. I believe my experience in engaging with the readers of The Courier and promoting articles written by students every week on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will ensure the posts I present to Rhiannon will be in keeping with the charity’s image whilst also remaining in keeping with the tone and style expected on social media. In preparation I have studied the posts already online from Changing Lives, particularly ones regarding the impact of their work, or ones explaining an aspect of the charity that may not be common knowledge.

Tomorrow I have arranged to have a feedback meeting with Rhiannon regarding my experience at Changing Lives over the past two weeks, as well as discussing potential pathways for the work I have created to grow and be used in the future.

The work that I completed today is more in keeping with the cultural industries aspect of Changing Lives, in my opinion. I was focussing on producing something for public consumption and creating a dialogue between the consumers of this literature and the charity through (predominantly) digital media. I am looking forward to working more closely in this area tomorrow.

21/3/16 - Editing

I began my final week at Changing Lives by proof-reading and self-editing the draft impact report I created in the office last week. As mentioned already, this will be a very important document in all future bid applications the charity makes, and after seeing how strenuous these applications can be first-hand from my encounters with the grants team, I know it is vital that the document I produce is accurate both factually and grammatically. 

I also ensured all design aspects of the  project were accurate and aesthetically pleasing, whilst also maintaining some uniformity with previous literature produced by the charity. 

Following my  own quality-control of the project, and some further additions to the statistics and infographics in the project (which I created on Thursday and Friday from home following my outreach work), I had a meeting with Rhiannon to hear her feedback of the draft product. Rhiannon expressed how pleased she was with my progress so far, and helped me with some of the vocabulary that the charity often use when talking about their service users to ensure the product I create is not offensive to anybody, and is clear to understand. Together we decided to re-order the sections of  the impact report from their previous alphabetical structure to a structure that tells the story of the charity more effectively and has the most impactful material at the beginning of the report.

It is important, when a situation like this arises, to take all constructive criticism on board without taking it personally. As somebody who works in a creative industry already (through my student journalism role), I appreciate how it is sometimes difficult to remove yourself from the work you produce and look at it from another perspective. The same can be said for academic essays produced at university. By reminding myself of this, I feel I was able to better take on Rhiannon's advice  and hopefully this will make my project even more successful.

With the end of my project in sight, I have arranged, alongside Rhiannon, to send the document to two of the highest-ranking employees in central office at the end of tomorrow for them to check it and make sure it tells the story of Changing Lives the way they want the public to perceive the charity. I feel that this setting of a deadline, by myself, will aid me in reaching my goal and I hope it shows my initiative to look past the immediacy of this two-week placement and to the future use of this product.

18/3/16 - GAP Drop-In

My time with Changing Lives today was again spent on the frontline rather than in central office. I met with Claire, an employee in the women's services at Changing Lives, to get to know about the work she does, before joining in with a drop-in session for GAP (Girls are Proud).

GAP works with women who have previously been involved in, or are still involved in, sex work, or women and girls who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Changing Lives offers a drop-in service every Friday in which women already involved in the services can come along and enjoy activities such as baking and jewellery-making as well as getting to know other service users and getting support from employees. I found the environment very open and friendly, and could see, even in the short amount of time I spent with Claire and the women, that the way the project is ran is highly beneficial in supporting and encouraging the service users. So much so, that the structure of the client journey used by Changing Lives and GAP is being researched academically and spread around the country, taught to similar organisations.

My role in today's drop-in was to be a source of contact for the service users: someone for them other than employees of Changing Lives to chat to. I also assisted Claire and her co-workers with preparing the activity for today and then tidying up afterwards.

As well as realising how important the work that Changing Lives carries out is today, I was also able to appreciate the vital role PR and Communications play. It not only promotes the work of the charity to  the general public, stakeholders and donators, it also helps to inform potential service users about the help that is available to them. This will inform the editing process of my project when I head back to the office on Monday; although (potential) service users are unlikely to read an impact report of a charity, the text I am producing can be reproduced in leaflets and blog posts in the future, which they may access. Also, I may be creating some separate media work next week if my project is finished before Thursday, and again service users may access this. Therefore I will be mindful of the service users I have encountered in the past two days and how was best to share ideas with them as I write up any further communications.

17/3/16 - Outreach

Rather than spending my day in central office, today I visited a few projects that Changing Lives run to learn a bit more about the company and to understand better the importance of the services they provide.

At 6:15am I met two employees outside Central Station for their daily outreach walk around the city centre. Maureen and Jes visited popular spots for rough sleepers to check up on people, see if there were any new people sleeping rough in the area, and to let them know about the services they offer at Ron Eager house, such as a free breakfast each morning. This walk was an eye-opening experience, especially as we encountered a young woman for whom Maureen was a case-worker, and who had been granted accommodation in one of Changing Lives' hostels just last week. 

Following our walk of the city, we went to Ron Eager house to engage with service users of the day centre. I met the manager of the centre and had an informal chat with him regarding the history of the centre, and opportunities for employment and volunteering there. Whilst I was in the office chatting with Matty, a service user was found in the toilets having a seizure, owing to a suspected drugs overdose. I did not expect the outreach trip to be as difficult as it was, and it really put into perspective the work I have been doing in central office all week. If I am able to create a professional and effective Impact Report that will supplement grant applications, the charity may have a better chance at getting more income to help service users like the ones I encountered today.

After my tour of the Ron Eager day centre, I travelled to Virginia House in Elswick Dene to see what the accommodation services the charity offers is like. Virginia House houses 17 people, and is for service users who are in recovery and clean. The average stay is around 2 years, with the aim of getting all residents into independent tenancies when they are ready. At the moment, Virginia House accommodates 16 males and one female. I was able to interact with the service users here, chatting to them about their experiences and getting to know about their interests, and was even offered a tour by one of the service users, Stu. This visit was a positive end to a quite challenging day, as it exemplified what can be achieved by both the service users and the charity given the means and opportunity, and thus has strengthened my desire to succeed in my project. 

The work that I have been completing at central office, and the work Rhiannon &co do every day there, feels so far removed from the frontline experiences I witnessed today. My work today has made the possibility of working in a charitable company such as Changing Lives following my graduation more appealing to me, however I do not feel I am strong enough, or have the right personality, to succeed on the frontline. A position in communications and PR, more centred in the cultural industries side of the company, would be the best way for me personally to help a charity and its service users, based on the skills I already possess etc.

I am looking forward to tomorrow, in which I will be visiting more projects, including the GAP project which works with women who have had experience in sex work. I feel the insight I am getting from my own experiences and through the stories of employees I encounter on these projects, will help me personalise the impact report I am creating and make it more impacting on any consumer of it.

16/3/16 - Designing

My third day in the office involved beginning the project my end goal is for the two-week placement: an impact report for the charity for the financial year 2015/16.

To do this, I relied on my skills gained from my experience as Culture Editor for Newcastle University's student newspaper, The Courier. I have held this role from the beginning of this academic year, and have worked for the newspaper throughout my entire university studies.

My abilities on Adobe InDesign and Photoshop have been extremely useful in thinking about creating the impact report. However, I have had to always keep in mind the different nature of the publication: The Courier is targeted at students, and so we are usually able to write in an informal, humorous style. The impact report I am creating on this project has to maintain a professional tone at all times, and extra detail must be placed on ensuring images are of the highest quality and always relevant. This is why I spent the first few hours of this morning proof-reading what I had written so far for the report, correcting any grammar mistakes, and adding extra detail that I have learned throughout the research process, along the way.

To source the images, I had to liaise with the communications team at Changing Lives to ensure all images I used were from the financial year the report is based on. I also used my initiative to design the template for each page, and the content page, using the colour scheme present in previous publicity literature from the company. 

I made good progress on the report today, completing 15 pages of the report. To complete the report (which I anticipate I will do on Friday) I now need to create unique infographics based on the statistics I collated at the beginning of the week. I will then be able to simply place these in the white space I have left for them, and then send the report to Rhiannon for approval. 

The statistics I will be making these infographics from are representative of April 2015-January 2016. When designing these infographics, then, I will be mindful that these statistics are likely to change as the figures for the last few months of the financial year are collated and released. I will therefore ensure they are easily editable, so I can liaise with the communications team at Changing Lives in the following months to update the impact report before its release to the public. 

15/3/15 - Organising Research With A Project In Mind

Following on from yesterday's research, I spent the first half of today finishing my research into the company's main facts and figures for the current financial year 2015/16. This research included communicating with the overseeing manager of Changing Lives' Fareshare scheme: a food redistribution service that caters for schools, community centres, and food banks. As the person in question was not in the office today, and spends much of the working week out of the office on projects, I contacted him via email detailing the work I am doing for Changing Lives for the next few weeks and then requesting some information from his resources to help with my project. 

With the main bulk of my statistical research completed, I then turned to creating an engaging and informative text document to accompany the info-graphics I will be creating. This required reading a lot of pre-existing literature produced from the charity, picking out the key points, and then formulating my own document to express these points in layman terms. I found that my experience in my English Literature degree was invaluable in this task, and helped me process a lot of dense information quickly.

Some of this information included Changing Lives' five-year plan: their 2020 vision. A 46-page document, the 2020 vision details the charity's targets, aspirations, and plans to achieve the vision. After reading it through a few times at home in preparation for my work placement (as I was presented with this literature during my induction session on the 9th March), I felt confident in scanning the document and extracting the key information. This key information, I found, included : the charity's main priorities over the next five years, such as their aspirations to increase media interest in their work and increase their online profile; targets for increasing the team of paid staff and volunteers making all the work possible, and funding options to make this growth possible; and the problems the charity, individually and as part of the charity sector in general, face in the next five years owing to likely government cuts etc. 

During this process I found a piece of information which I believe is quintessential for my project. At the moment, the charity only has a  25% success rate in its bid applications, totalling 14 successful applications out of a total 56 for this year. I believe that a professionally-produced Impact Report will be highly beneficial in future bid applications as it will provide an overview of what the charity has achieved already and also provide an indicator of what the charity is capable of through the right funding and so on. 

In the afternoon I began to focus on the design of the Impact Report in preparation for my starting to lay it all up tomorrow. I began by using the Communications team's existing resources - images, case studies, leaflet templates etc - and pooled a collection of designs I thought would be useful for my project. I will ensure that every section of my report has an accompanying image and/or info-graphic, and have decided to use the same colour scheme as previous public documents from Changing Lives to create a visual link between its existing public reception and the report I am producing. I feel that keeping a consistent colour scheme also strengthens the professional reputation I want the report to give to its consumers, whether they be stakeholders or members of the general public. Any images resourced from outside the Communications team's library has been sourced with copyright laws in mind to ensure the document is able to be published legally. 

Today I have also contacted employees of Changing Lives who work in the various centres around Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I feel that a first-hand experience of the work the employees go through every day, and the services they provide to their clients, is vital in ensuring the report I produce reflects truly the impact the charity has had in the past year. So far, I have confirmed attendance on an outreach project on Thursday morning, in which I will be walking the streets of the city centre and reaching out to any rough sleepers we may find. I am also waiting to hear back from an employee at Virginia House, a mixed-gender accommodation centre for single homeless people from Newcastle. 

I feel my experiences today have provided me with a better understanding of the organisation and communication skills needed to flourish in a working office environment. The skill to continue working on a task and finding other projects to work towards whilst waiting for information from a colleague has been very important throughout today's work. Additionally, the ability to consume a large volume of information and then condense it to the relevant points for the project you are working on, a skill I feel I already possess due to my experience throughout my university studies, has been refined.