#WeekNotes S1E1 — Year Here Kickoff Bootcamp

I’ve been meaning to start a blog that records things I have learnt for a while now.

I frequently found myself learning things I had always wanted to learn and thinking “this is great”, but then forgetting the lovely nuggets of information soon after I had been exposed to them.

As a result, I am going to post my #weeknotes every Sunday (lucky you guys) to track the learnings and developments I make, as well as share with the world exciting and valuable information in the areas of personal development and social innovation.

SUMMARY

1. It was my first week of my course in social innovation with Year Here. From Monday to Friday I was surrounded by 17 inspiring peers driven to change society for the better. We participated in service design challenges and personal development exercises that sought to develop our leadership, collaboration and social innovation skills.
2. I said goodbye to my parents as I moved from their house down in lovely ole’ Surrey (big up the Surrey massive) to my friends floor in Bermondsey London.

HIGHLIGHTS

Designing a service improvement for a homeless shelter in North London.

The shelter we worked at was a pioneering homeless day centre that has been providing help for people who are homeless for over 20 years.

It was Monday morning and the first time I had woken up before 8am in a ridiculously long time. I was knackered after a shitty sleep and commuting to the other ends of the earth (the full bloody length of the Northern Line) ((in bloody rush hour)) but excited to meet the people who I would be spending the next 10 months with.

After an hour of cliche and slightly cringey ice-breaker activities where we all shared our passions and concerns (at least there were no “what animal would you be”…) and I forgot the name of the person who I was paired with (even though I had met her before and knew full well who she was) we were instructed that we would be designing a real-world solution for the shelter.

Our brief:

Develop a feedback service that effectively captured the opinions of the clients of the shelter and could be shared across the clients, volunteers and staff of the service.

To-date, the shelter had no formal feedback process in place.

So, for the 20 years the centre has been providing services there had been no understanding of how good (or bad!) their services/facilities truly were.

The activity involved 18 of us who had never worked together before:

• self-organising,
• evaluating the process we would have to use to solve the issue;
• dividing and conquering (splitting into groups and breaking the task into manageable chunks);
• designing questions for the homeless clients of the centre and the staff & volunteers of the centre;
• asking the different stakeholders the questions we had created;
• designing a solution to the brief we had been given.

For me, this task gave me immediate insight into a core learning area I had identified for the next 12 months —

“how does one identify a social problem that needs to be solved and design a solution to it?”.

In only 4 hours, our group had defined our brief, evaluated the process we needed to take to create a solution, interviewed 40 people (a large percentage of which spoke English as a second language), understood the barriers we faced and devised a solution to effectively gain feedback from the clients of the shelter.

A snapchat of how HAB were doing on that day.

A longer term feedback solution.

Our solution was two-fold. Firstly, we designed a visual chart with the services offered and a star rating so that the clients would quickly be able to rate the services/facilities.

The use of pictures allowed and encouraged those who did not want to engage in conversation with us, as well as those who couldn’t speak English, to be empowered in the process of feedback gathering.

From this snapshot of how things were going today, we created a system so that notable information could be coordinated by the staff & volunteers before each weekly meeting and followed up if necessary. We then built in a feedback/discussion board so that the volunteers & staff could rely this information back to the clients.

Although not full-proof (we had only been ideating solutions for 4 hours!) our solution:

1. Overcame barriers to entry for homeless clients such as:
   = language issues,
   = disenfranchisement,
2. Empowered homeless clients to be involved in the feedback process.
3. Illustrated a snapshot of how clients were finding the services today.
4. Allowed the shelter to track the performance of services/facilities over the short and long term.
5. Kept all stakeholders in the loop of the feedback process.

Food from Fat Macy’s

After our eventful day it was time for our Welcome Dinner at the Bromley-by-Bow community centre in East London. The centre is a pioneering charity that combines an extensive neighbourhood hub with a medical practice and a community research project.

We were promised a memorable dinner, but told no further information. It turned out our dinner was hosted in a converted chapel at the centre of the centre (pun fully intended) that featured beautiful art pieces and sparkling lighting. Rob Trimble, the Chief Executive of Bromley-by-Bow opened with a speech about integrity, drive for social change and maintaining our values before handing us over to Meg Doherty — the Founder of Fat Macy’s and 2016 Year Here Fellow.

She introduced Fat Macy’s as the social enterprise she Founded to tackle the ridiculous rise in homelessness in London by training those living in temporary accommodation to be chefs who make delicious home-cooked food and dining experiences.

Throughout our three course meal there were a couple of speeches peppered in (pun fully intended) by one of Fat Macy’s volunteers. His energy oozed, but the timidness and esteem issues that had plagued him as a result of the no-doubt unimaginable things he had been through as a result of being homeless were apparent.

He expressed his battle with his sense of unworthiness and lack of confidence and the distress speaking gave him. Nevertheless, he didn’t let that fear limit him. He was here communicating, volunteering & training to try and change his circumstances.

I spoke to him alone and the connection was deep. It was a connection filled with shared experiences and pain.

Seeing him as a vulnerable yet strong and committed individual was moving. He was not his pain and he promised to pursue a path of purpose and growth, even if it was not the path he was exposed to or easily able to follow.

WHAT HAVE I LEARNT

1. My body can function even if I get limited sleep.
2. After 3 days of limited sleep and a couple of evenings having tipples of wine I start to feel bloody fatigued and get a bit grouchy.
3. The ambition of social innovators is not necessarily matched by all those in the social sector — thinking about the client who opposed an idea of a feedback because they didn’t want negative feedback… (lol).
4. Self-esteem is critical to empowerment. Self-esteem is critical to how one carry’s oneself, how one communicates and how one interacts with the world. The self-esteem of those who have been battered by disadvantage, abuse and exploitation (such as those plagued by homelessness) is lowwwww.
5. Social sector solutions need to address one’s ‘belief system’ (i.e. their self-esteem) if empowerment is to be attained. It is no good giving someone a trillion pounds to innovate if they don’t believe they are worthy of innovation.
6. Spending silent time looking into someone’s eyes and thinking about the things they might have experienced in life is extremely moving.
7. Thinking about questions like “name a time in your childhood that was magical” or “talk about a time someone made you believe in yourself” or “what do you appreciate in yourself” makes you bawl 235245345 tears.
8. It’s amazing what you can do under-pressure. Don’t overthink it. Just do it! What’s the problem? How might we solve this? Test it! GO!