As I'm intending to use this space to try and blog some useful reflective content arising from the different things I'm currently working on – and as those things are mostly what are preventing me timewise from blogging about them – I thought a quick post just introducing them might be in order (and would help me post on them without extra introduction in future…):
In Action
- Actions Speak Louder dissemination – A celebration of youth-led grantmaking and projects. After supporting young people in the run-up to the awards ceremony I'm now working to share stories from the 15 winning projects online with the main aim of increasing awareness of the Youth Opportunity Fund and Youth Capital Fund.
- Hear by Right website -first developed three years ago – I'm revamping the Hear by Right website on top of a Drupal framework. The site is a shared learning resource for users of the Hear by Right organisational mapping and planning tool for young peoples involvement in decision making – and includes a database of shared examples of mapping and planning from organisations using the tool. I've almost got the technical back-end in place… and I'm aiming to have it online by July.
- As an aside, I've also been doing a lot of tinkering with the Drupal Location module to enable geolocation features for the Hear by Right website. For now I've integrated it with the geonames web-service – and the next challenge is linking to administrative boundary data so we can pull out which organisations fall into which Government Office regions
- Enfusion Network – a developing network for Youth Participation Consultants. I've build version 1 of the website here and we're meeting this weekend to review how the network will continue to develop. We're contrained on resource at the moment (so far we've built everything without funding…) but the potential for the network is really exciting, and there seems to be strong demand for a space connecting
In Development
- GrantMaker – last year I delivered a national management information system for the YouthBank grant making network – and I'm working now on a more general version 2. It's designed to support small grant-making panels in capturing the information they need for effective operation and evaluation – and to help provide management information to funders. Mike (aka. Lionfish) is mostly working on the code – and we're going to be ready to start some user-testing soon… (if you're involved in a grantmaking panel, youth opportunity fund/youth capital fund etc. and would like to be part of the beta… get in touch…)
- Social Media & Productivity Tool Training -I'm developing a training programme designed to help organisations update their online skill-sets and explore different social media and online productivity tools. More information soon…
- University Applications – I'll be going to my (belated) graduation next week – and so it seems about the right time to think about further study. I'm currently thinking about something focussed on global ethics and applied moral/political philosophy – but I'm also interested in exploring the possiblity of a research masters around youth-led microfinance and grant making…
Not an exhaustive list… but a start…