I experienced an amazing time while speaking with people from all across Barking and Dagenham
Getting work experience in investment banking or at a Big Four firm is fairly traditional, but it’s not the only way to learn more about how money shapes our society. As Anisah Ahmed found out, a participatory grantmaking charity can offer young people a unique yet open-minded and radical type of work experience. On this occasion, the placement was managed by our Head of Systems and Impact, Cameron Bray. In this BD Giving Note, they tell us about how the placement came about and their experience of working together.
What was the initial experience?
Anisah: Initially, I was skeptical and assumed that doing office work within a charity would be tedious and repetitive. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised to experience the complete opposite. I was able to educate myself and understand the processes and the roles within charities. Being integrated and welcomed to the team by a group of amazing individuals who are truly passionate about helping and building a community, I was introduced to the world of participatory grantmaking and how they support the people of Barking and Dagenham.
Cameron: We were introduced to Rank Foundation through Louise, our External Communications Lead, as she also works with them. She made us aware of their Community Action Placements (CAP), which sees young people with leadership potential placed in charities across the UK to gain experience. Luckily for us, they were looking to place a young person based in North London on a non-residential placement. We wanted the placement to be meaningful, and offer something more than just basic administrative tasks. We wanted the young person to be able to take something away with them, while also providing the charity with something that would strengthen our work. The scheme was really simple to get involved in, with an online interview where The Rank Foundation asked about our work and asked us to provide a clear work plan that they could share with Anisah to pique her interest. Once she had accepted, we had to fill in an online form giving more details as well as sharing our risk assessment and relevant safeguarding documentation.
What did the placement entail?
Anisah: The setup of BD Giving allowed me to become more involved and open minded towards the social sector and the different roles and impacts required for the whole system to work. Rank Foundation typically do placements which involve more physical activity, yet BD Giving has created a new pathway for other Rank scholars who are interested in the fields of project management, research, and finance to experience. The opportunities of young people within work experience are limited to an extent, since you aren’t often taken into community events or allowed to be actively involved within meetings. However, at BD Giving everyone is so willing to get you involved and they all want you to participate and give feedback to see how you found your time at an event. This really enhanced the welcoming aura of BD Giving which is reflective in how they act towards the residents and community.
Cameron: For the last year, I have been working to improve our data collection, wanting to take the charity beyond case studies and into actual analysis, something that is very labour-intensive and requires a certain set of skills. I proposed to Rank that we could offer a research-focussed placement, which would see the young person trained in a range of skills that would allow them to design and deliver a qualitative research project in two weeks that we could then use to understand and promote our impact. In order to facilitate this, it was important to me that Anisah got to know as much of our community as possible in those two weeks. She got to participate in conversations about the future of the borough, bringing her insight and perspective as a young person into the mix. This is an especially important perspective in a borough with the highest proportion of under-16s in England and Wales.
What happened with the research project?
Anisah: Shadowing Cameron, I was tasked with completing a research report, which consisted of me using qualitative data and learning about Thematic Analysis and how to create codes and themes from text. At first I was startled by the work, having to learn not only a group of new faces but also new skills and terminology, yet I was ready and willing to take on the new load. To first gain a grasp of what I was about to do, I had to learn what participatory grantmaking was, who it impacts and why it is so important. My surface layer understanding of it was further developed after talking to other members of the community who are involved with BD Giving.
Cameron: It was an ambitious project that I had in mind, asking a young person to learn about participatory grantmaking before asking them to do research into how BD Giving has gone about it. It involved not only learning about PGM, but also how to conduct interviews, how to do research ethically, how to create transcripts and – perhaps most ambitious of all – how to apply a qualitative research analysis. I opted to teach Anisah Braun & Clarke’s six-steps of Thematic Analysis as this is a method that is widely used in many fields, offering accessibility and a robust framework for analysing qualitative data.
What are you taking away from the experience?
Anisah: I created my hypothesis, and used this to design my research questions. I then applied these by interviewing six of BD Giving’s stakeholders, who were the only ones to respond to me in the time available from a recommended list provided by BD Giving. After this, I went through the Thematic Analysis steps on my data to create a report to collate my findings, which I then presented to the rest of the BD Giving team. I experienced an amazing time while speaking with people from all across Barking and Dagenham and felt the significant impact that the organisation has with the community by empowering all and allowing everyone to become their own decision makers. My final report will be made available soon, where you will be able to read all about my findings. After undergoing a 10-day work experience placement at BD Giving, I totally advocate for all young people to take part in the same experience and want to thank the Rank Foundation for connecting us.
Cameron: Anisah took to research and analysis in a way that blew all my expectations out of the window, to the point I want to be even more ambitious about where we take this next. As someone who failed to get any work experience while I was at school, it was great to be able to offer her something that she really enjoyed and pushed her potential as a future leader. It really highlighted to me the importance of providing young people opportunities that they may not have considered before, something that Anisah mentioned on numerous occasions.
The Rank Foundation placement really helped us try out something new, which has encouraged us to not only think about more ways we can involve young people in our work but also how we can support other charities to provide their own unique placements.
