YouthNet blog

Wednesday Jun 30, 2010

Developing Do-it: can you help us with our 'ordering' issue?

Do-it is a really easy website to explain. Type your postcode in and get back lots of opportunities local and relevant to you. You can refine the search by choosing particular causes or types of activity, or looking for specific keywords etc. And we know it works – every minute someone applies for a volunteering opportunity they found on Do-it.

The beauty of Do-it is that we list things by proximity – so that opportunities closest to you are the ones that are listed first.

Except that not all opportunities are that simple.  Some opportunities take place at a specific place (helping at an office or day centre, running a youth club in a community hall etc). We call those 'pinpoint' opportunities.

However many other opportunities don't have a specific location.  They may be opportunities where you:

• are required to travel around a local area (eg doing home help, school talks),
• where you might be picked up from home and taken to a designated location (eg helping an environmental group preserve hedgerows)
• where the location is spread out over a wide area (eg marshalling a bike race)
• where there isn't a dedicated point (eg being the county representative for a charity which doesn't have any premises in the area)
• where you can take place at multiple locations (eg an initiative available in all the libraries in your county, or a fun run being organised in multiple parks)
• where the opportunity takes place at a specific location, but that it attracts volunteers from a far wider area (eg being a charity representative at Glastonbury festival)
• and virtual volunteering, where you are primarily based in your own home (or wherever you choose).

These opportunities become quite difficult to promote on our current search system, and whilst we've attempted to tackle them with a county-wide opportunities listing – we've never really cracked it. But over the last year, as we've been developing the new database that will allow us to offer a lot more functionality, we are determined to fix this properly.

So in the new system we have 'pinpoint' opportunities that happen in a specific location and 'boundary' opportunities that can happen within a specific area respectively. (Don't worry about the naming; this won't be how we present it to the end user). The boundary can be as small as a local authority area, but as wide as the whole UK. We'll be encouraging information providers to use the largest area for their opportunity to maximise the efficiency of the database (plus their time to maintain those opportunities).

We're now struggling with how to promote these opportunities fairly to potential volunteers. We don't have the ease of ordering by proximity – an opportunity that is UK-wide in every library could be a lot closer than an opportunity that is only within your local authority. We have to consider the following points:

• We know most people don't look beyond the first ten opportunities, so we need those to be the most relevant to the volunteer.
• We have to be fair to information providers: ensuring that all opportunities have an equal chance of being found. Therefore we couldn't list A-Z.
• We could list by the most recently updated/added opportunity – but we need to ensure that information providers don't misuse the system and bump their opportunities to the top of the list by frequently updating the opportunity.
• We also have to make sure that local opportunities are not swamped out by national organisations – fifteen large organisations with UK-wide opportunities that have been posted recently will knock an opportunity from a local organisation out of the crucial top ten list.
• We can't guarantee there will be opportunities at every level (local authority, county, regional, national and UK-wide).
• We want the list to be dynamic – one of the complaints of the proximity search is that a 'uninspiring' result that is close to you repeatedly appears at the top of the list and therefore makes people less likely to search further.
• We could randomise the search, but we also need to make sure that people can find an opportunity they saw previously. Random search results are difficult to explain.
• We could dream up a complicated formula that uses a mixture of the above

We're a bit stuck on this point, and would love to get some advice from people with relevant UX experience, particularly if you deal with location services or ordering search results. We're struggling to think of a similar search service that has the same sort of factors attached to it.

If you've got some thoughts or comments, then drop them in the response box below, or if you'd like to contact me direct and perhaps come in and chat, then email me olly~benson@youthnet~org (replace the tildes(~) with dots – this prevents me getting lots of spam!).

 Thanks in anticipation,

Olly Posted by Olly Benson ( 10:06 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]

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Friday Jun 18, 2010

Running the Brighton Marathon for YouthNet

It was the end of October when I decided to sign up to run the Brighton Marathon for YouthNet. I had just bought some new running trainers and I think that the new-running-shoes-bouncy feel was making running feel fast and easy. But I had been thinking about a marathon for ages so it was just a matter of finally deciding to bite the bullet and go for it. Soon after, my housemate and I cycled to Waltham Abbey - a 20 mile odd round trip - and all I could think was 'next April I've got to run this - and then six more miles'.

My flatmates and boyfriend really helped me out by using my birthday to kit me out with a ipod nano, 101 running songs cd and a fancy ipod piece of equipment which plugged into my nano and stuck to my trainer (using gaffa tape as I didn’t have the correct trainers). As someone who has always run without music, I felt a bit odd the first time I 'wired up' before setting off - and I got quite a shock when, after pounding along to Eye of the Tiger, wondering why I hadn't done this before, an american voice in my ear suddenly said 'one mile completed'!. But I soon started to look forward to his funny little voice telling me 'six miles to go', 'three miles to go' - and he definitely always sounded more excited when he was telling me '400 metres to go'.

Next thing to do was to navigate the massive amount of training suggestions I was given online and from friends and relatives. In the end I sort of went for a flexible, non definite style of training which involved doing too much too fast and then having a bit of a burn out, being taken down by every cold and virus going and then finally starting to be a little more sensible - so not exactly one that I'd recommend! At this point I started increasing the iron, vitamins and energy gels as well as the miles and being fed energy foods by a very patient boyfriend (when people start sending you energy food to your office, it probably means you've been complaining about tiredness too much)!

Another highlight of winter training was of course, more snow than we've had in years and incredibly icy roads and paths. Luckily, Cat, the YouthNet fundraiser in charge of the marathon, was on hand to send round helpful videos about how running on ice perfects your running style. However, despite this, I tended to stick to the tiny grass verges on each side of the path - which was fine until someone came the other way, also bobbing along a tiny verge. But I only had one spectacular fall and a few resultant bruises - and the crisp cold of the winter certainly got rid of cobwebs and made hot baths and open fires even more enjoyable to return to.

In January it was also time to get my JustGiving page up. A lot of my friends and family don't know exactly what it is that YouthNet do, so I wrote as much as I could explaining why I thought we were worth supporting. I was amazed and touched by the amount of incredibly generous people who sponsored me - helping me to beat my target and then some! Like the american mile man in my ear, it gave me an excited boost each time I saw a Justgiving email in my inbox.

Before long runs were getting longer. Six miles along the Lea Valley and you get to a couple of miles of industrial, black canals, floating plastic bags and bus depots where high-vis jacketed men smoke and watch you pass. Apart from that, the marshes, and the canal were great places to run. I even got in a couple in the fells when I went back up north. I started working from home on a Wednesday so I could get a run in while it was light - and, living in a four storey house, ended up doing a lot of limping up and down stairs during post run afternoons. It got quite exciting when every longer run became the longest I'd ever done - and, past about 14 miles, everything leaves your head apart from the beat of the music and the feel of your body moving - it's an incredibly peaceful feeling.

The week before the run I was supposed to be doing a half marathon I had enthusiastically signed up to with friends some time ago. As the day of the half marathon approached I didnt know whether to do it or not - but i admit my final decision came down to 'Oh well if Eddie Izzard can do 43 marathons in 51 days then I can do this' - he's got a lot to answer for when it comes to people attempting feats they probably shouldn't. Perhaps my body was just exhausted, or maybe there were more hills than I was used to but I found this one really hard! I also realised that my ipod nano wasn't quite accurate and my training had been slightly shorter than it should have been. Plus my knee was seizing up!

During the final week (or few weeks really) before the real thing you are supposed to 'taper down' - stopping the distances and building up your bodies energy supplies. When you're used to running regularly it's very weird to be both sitting still and eating lots. Added to this was my newest concern that I was in the wrong category. They ask you at the very start, when you first sign up, how fast you are. I doubled my half marathon time and added half an hour or so and ended up in the blue category for starting - 3 hours 45 until 4 hours 15. In the final week - and after realising that I might not have even been training as long as I thought, I decided this was lunacy and had visions of me being left behind in the wake of incredibly speedy people in running pants - all laughing at the fact I had even considered I could be a 'blue' runner.

Having said this, I was excited as well as nervous about the weekend. We had decided to treat ourselves to a hotel and went down on the Saturday so we had a bit of time in Brighton first. On Saturday night we went out to dinner with Tash and Matt, a colleague and her husband who had come down to watch. They gave me a card from YouthNet - absolutely everyone had signed it and I was really touched. All that evening and the next morning I got good luck text messages and emails from friends and family – all sounding so impressed I started to wonder if they knew more about marathons than I did, and I was actually attempting something impossible.

Sunday the 18th finally arrived bright and sunny. I dressed in my YouthNet t shirt, pinned on my number, stuffed all the things I wanted to carry with me in the tiny pocket on my shorts, rubbed Vaseline on all the recommended places and sucked down a couple of sticky, sugary energy gels. The field at the start was full of people, all dressed in different charity tops and outfits. While the Brighton Marathon is really new so there were not so many mad costumes and record breaking attempts, the atmosphere was great. Finally, after a slightly delayed start (a car parked on the course), we were off! There were people cheering all the way along the course, with shopkeepers on the steps as we passed and scouts offering water and energy blocks. A lot of the race was ran along the sea front - which meant the view was beautiful and the air was clear and fresh even in the warmth. YouthNet had found a great place to cheer and there was a whole group of them down to support the YouthNet runners. It was amazing to be finally running the race I'd been preparing for all this time, and to watch the mile markers slowly slowly pass. The water and energy drinks available en route meant that I didn't feel too exhausted throughout and ended up completing it in 3hours 50 (chip time!) after which I wobbled back to the hotel for a bath and to bathe in the exhausted, achey but wonderful glow of having done it - and having raised £1395 for YouthNet in the process!

Posted on behalf of Clare Foster, marathon runner extraordinaire.

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ERYICA's 21st General Assembly - Jonathan's story

Since Feb 2010, I have been volunteering for YouthNet across a number of departments, including the Government Development team (working on securing funding from Europe), Marketing (generating awareness of the services we provide to young people) and in the Advice and Guidance team as a Peer Advisor.

I was given the opportunity to volunteer in the UK for six months, through a grant scheme provided by the European Commission, part of their Lifelong Learning Programme – 'The Leonardo da Vinci project'. I chose YouthNet due to my past experience in ERYICA (the European Youth Information and Counselling Agency) based in Luxembourg, for which YouthNet is the UK affiliated organisation.

At the beginning of the month ERYICA held its 21st General Assembly during the 3 - 6 June in Helsinki, Finland. YouthNet decided to have someone represent them and the UK at the event, and guess what, I was offered this great opportunity!  The event was also an excellent opportunity to raise YouthNet's profile in Europe; helping to strengthen current and new partnerships, increase our networks, gather project ideas, hear project proposals and present YouthNet's work at a European level.

Activities took two forms: 

1. Workshops and discussions on the theme of ERYICA's present workplan for 2010, and looking at future work over 2011-2013
2. Networking activities and project fairs where we presented our own organisation's work, at all levels - both national and European.
   

From my side, I introduced participants to YouthNet's work at a national level, outlining our service as an online guide to life for young people, and pointing out our ambitions to develop European-wide projects. Throughout the event people showed a very positive interest in our work.

YouthNet was also allocated a stand at the event. I had placed quite a bit of YouthNet related introductory papers, leaflets and business cards on them, which was just as well because it was very busy and people took away lots of our materials (Thanks to Alicia and Jessamy who had given me a good bunch of materials to display)!

One of my biggest moments at the event was when I spoke with ERYICA's President, Marc Boes (who was also representing The Netherlands), who suggested that we organise a study visit to the YouthNet offices in October to discuss and look at how YouthNet and ERYICA can share best practice and knowledge, for example around European Fundraising strategies.

These events may be hard work, especially for the brilliant organisers, but they are also a lot of fun things that come out of them like the socialising, sharing meals and also participating in a cultural programme.  We enjoyed mouth-watering dinners at local restaurants, a party organised at Allianssi house (a national youth organisation) and a guided tour of a nearby island which happened to have a fort commanded by Swedes and Russians in the past.  It was actually in these informal moments where we got the most out of networking!

We are now working to follow-up with many of the ERYICA members from across Europe, who I made contact with at the General Assembly. As a result of the contacts I made we hope there will be many new partnership opportunities in the near future!

By Jonathan Perez

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Monday Jun 14, 2010

And the winner is...!

After four months, ninety three entries and a lot of blood, sweat and pencil shavings, we finally announced the results of YouthNet's LifeSupport: Change through art competition, at a swanky event at London's Design Museum on 25 May. The overall winner was Chris Vickers with his film 'Times of change', which depicts his personal interpretation of how people's relationship with money changed during the recession.

His bronze coin sculpture cleverly spelt out the film's title by using five-hundred two pence coins, studio lights and the resulting shadows. The amazing artwork took him over 11 hours to build, capture and then destroy. Twenty-one year-old Chris won £1,000 for his efforts (presented to him in a beautiful golden piggy bank), which he plans to spend on a brand new Macbook Pro to help him with his graphic design course (we're so jealous!).

We asked Chris to recreate a smaller version of the shadow sculpture at the event, and he willingly obliged. We also asked him to help smash a piggy-bank piñata with the ceremony's host, Chloe Madeley. I think this was probably harder than making the film itself, because the piñata clung on for dear life, unwilling to be broken. Eventually (and with a bit of behind-the-scenes battery), the pig exploded, sending showers of gold chocolate coins and fake bank notes about the room. Great for stress relief!

On the night, we also awarded £300 runner-up cheques to Brigitte Sutherland, 23, for her illustration, 'Seven Months'; Connor Matheson, 17, for his haunting photo montage 'Ghost Town'; and Andrea Bowie, 23, for her short film 'The Fightback Starts Here'.

Chloe Madeley was joined as host by our Chairman and Founder, Martyn Lewis, along with the judges (including Charlie McDonnell, artist Matthew Stone and animator Nigel Davies). They presented awards in each category, while DJ Nonames from renowned British hip-hop crew The Foreign Beggars provided the musical backdrop. The walls of the room displayed all the shortlisted entrants' work, and a money tree was provided for people to write reflective thoughts about the recession on bank-note leaves, and hang them on its branches. Check out the video below for a taster of the evening.

Pictures of the whole event can also be found on our facebook page.

We would also like to say a huge well done and thank you to all the shortlisted entrants. We hope you enjoyed the evening. We certainly had a lot of fun hosting the event and meeting you all. The quality of your work was amazing, and we're sure that your talent will take you far! 

By Oliver Drackford

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