This weekend, I volunteered with DataKind UK on their Summer DataDive, which took place on the weekend of 28th and 29th July 2018 in the Pivotal London offices in Shoreditch. I had a fantastic, memorable weekend, mixing with around 200 other data scientists.
I’d like to thank the DataKind team for being so inspirational, giving, and kind with their time and skills. I’d like to emphasise my absolute admiration for the Data Ambassadors and the work that they do to lift everyone up.
Why did I do this? DataKind appealed to me since it meant that I could sharpen my data science skills by pitching in with experts. New learners to Data Science are welcome, and there were also newbies who had some experience of data and wanted to know more. There was room for everyone to contribute, so if you are a newbie, it would be a great way to join in the conversations and learn from experts who love what they can achieve with data. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to mix with real data scientists. This isn’t Poundland data science, and this is not pseudo Data Science. This is the real thing; and I spent two days immersed in real problems using Data Science as a solution. I learned a lot, and I contributed as well. There is a saying that you are the average of your friends, and I needed to get close to more Data Scientists so that I could build on my earlier experience on AI and bring it up-to-date.
I wanted to help a charity, by dedicating my time and skills, to support women and girls who need it. I understand that there are vulnerable men too; but this isn’t about whataboutism. Women and girls are disproportionally affected by issues such as domestic violence and being the victims of sexual crimes, and I wanted to do something practical to help.
For my specific contribution, I was working with a team of 25 other data scientists, we worked on finding insights in data belonging to Lancashire Women’s Centre. The vision of Lancashire Women’s Centre is that all women and girls in Lancashire are valued and treated as equals. Their aim is to empower women and girls to be able to transform their lives by bringing them together to find their voice, share experiences and understanding, develop their knowledge and skills, challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about them so that they can have choices in becoming the individuals they want to be. I share this conviction deeply and I wanted to help.
You may well be thinking that the charity help a small number of women, but that’s not the case at all. They have a real impact in their community. The Lancashire Women’s Centre has helped over 3000 women in the last year. This includes 5807 hours of therapeutic support were accessed by 1154 women and 78 men. Following therapy: 25% were no longer taking medication, 8% felt the support had helped them find and keep a job, 12% continued to access LWC services to support their recovery.
So what did I do? I can’t share specific details because the data is confidential, and it obviously impacts some of the UK’s most vulnerable women and girls. I will say that the tools used were CoCalc, R, Python, Excel and Tableau and Power BI to work with the data.
DataKind™ brings high-impact organizations dedicated to solving the world’s biggest challenges together with leading data scientists to improve the quality of, access to and understanding of data in the social sector. This leads to better decision-making and greater social impact. Launched in 2011, DataKind leads a community of passionate data scientists, visionary partners and mission-driven organizations with the talent, commitment and energy to use data science in the service of humanity. DataKind is headquartered in New York City and has Chapters in Bangalore, Dublin, San Francisco, Singapore, the UK and Washington DC. More information on DataKind, our programs and our partners can be found on their website: www.datakind.org
I’m the one on the right, wearing orange!
I’m looking forward to the next one!
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