2015 PROSPECTUS

You want to make a difference. But you know that it’s going to be a long hard slog towards real impact. We think that journey starts with frontline insight – serving and building relationships with people who are at the margins of society – and trying your hand at building smart solutions to social problems. This document outlines the learning journey that we intend Year Here Fellows to embark on.

OVERVIEW // PHILOSOPHY // CURRICULUM // PROGRAMME

OVERVIEW This course combines real-world learning with our faculty of experts, frontline service and a chance to create your own initiatives to stimulate change – because we believe the best way to learn how to develop ventures that have real impact is to try. We’ll give you the raw materials and creative toolkit you need to develop solutions from the ground up. You will leave us with an online portfolio that is packed full of projects, ideas and experiences. Your major projects start with the Frontline Innovation Project. After spending a few weeks on placement, you’ll build on the insight you’ve gathered to design and deliver an initiative to enhance the impact of your placement host organisation. Backed by funding from O2 Think Big, you’ll ensure that your project is original, viable and high-impact. Next, you’ll work in groups on an Impact Consulting Project, where you’ll work for a real government client to undertake creative community engagement activities and advise on their social impact strategy. Finally, you’ll develop a Social Venture idea, working alone or in groups to come up with a new product or service with a sustainable business model. You’ll receive training, support and critique from the Year Here team, your mentor, and specialist organisations like IDEO, New Philanthropy Capital and FutureGov. In the final few weeks of the course, you’ll lead a Final Project, the centrepiece of your portfolio and your manifesto for the next phase of your career. It might take the form of a business plan for your social venture or a one-off community project or campaign.

FRONTLINE INSIGHT

It’s not about sitting in an ivory tower, designing policies and solutions for people. We believe that progressive change precipitates from deep insight and working with people. And that’s where you’ll start. By stepping into the shoes of a homelessness support worker, a care home assistant or youth worker in your 4.5 month Frontline Service Placement, you'll deliver critical services and make a contribution where it counts. We’ll push you to dive even deeper into others’ experiences with a Writing for Social Change project led by Sophie Howarth, the co-founder of The School of Life. You’ll tell the stories of the people you work with through a series of writing assignments.

RESIDENTS OF HOMELESS HOSTEL PALMER HOUSE AT A WOMEN’S GROUP HOSTED BY 2014 FELLOW, SOPHIE SLATER.

CUTTING-EDGE TRAINING

Designing and developing new social projects and services that are genuinely effective is no mean feat. We are serious about creating the environment for you to learn the social innovation skills you need to lead social change. Through 3 immersive week-long Bootcamps, you’ll dive headfirst into subjects like design for social change, business model development and ethnography. You’ll also learn by doing with a series of fast-paced Challenges where you’ll work with the whole cohort to develop one-off social initiatives and campaigns, like the Hackney Human Library. You’ll be taught key professional skills – from financial modelling to project proposal writing – and benefit from careers guidance during Futures Week.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

For us, leadership isn’t just about being the Chief Exec or the Prime Minister. It’s about envisioning a better world, having the courage to challenge the status quo and bringing people along with you as you strive towards your vision. During your Frontline Service Placement, we will meet up weekly for Fireside Fridays, a chance to share stories in an intimate environment using the ‘Action Learning Set’ methodology. You will also have regular one-to-one coaching sessions and a 360-degree appraisal, drawing feedback from your colleagues and peers to give you a rounded picture of your performance. You will get blogging about your insights and experiences, on the Year Here website, on partner’s sites and for national publications. You will also develop an online portfolio, which will be a chance for you to showcase your projects and experiences to potential employers and investors.

NETWORKING

You will leave us with a peer group of budding leaders and connections to our extraordinary faculty. We also think ourselves lucky to live in London and grab the chance to play as hard as we work. Monthly Mentoring sessions and a Speaker Series will introduce you to a wide array of social leaders – from senior civil servants to social entrepreneurs. You’ll meet even more leaders at GradFest, a festival of social innovation and the culmination of the Year Here programme. And throughout the course, we’ll let our hair down at Fellow-led meetup, Beer Here, and Field Day.

LEARNING PHILOSOPHY You get out what you put in. It’s such an overused adage, isn’t it? But we mean it, and here’s why:

1. Learning starts when you want it to. Most traditional educational experiences followed the old-school didactic approach. As the learner, you are talked at by an all-knowing teacher. We believe this doesn’t work and that people learn best by applying and experimenting with new knowledge, getting real-world feedback and reflecting on their performance. This is not radical stuff, it’s called experiential learning and it’s based on tonnes of research by educationalists like David Kolb and John Dewey. Critically, responsibility for the learning lies with the learner not the teacher. Unless you are actively engaged in the learning process – asking questions, exploring your own ignorance, having the courage to try out new approaches and seeking feedback from others – you’ll slip behind. So, our Fellows take responsibility for their own learning. And we take responsibility for creating the best conditions for that learning to happen.

2. This isn’t really about you. We select bright, high-achievers as Fellows and invest heavily in them. While we care about their success, fulfilment and wellbeing, we work with bright sparks as a means to the even greater end of tackling poverty and inequality. Working with some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised people in the country comes with a responsibility to put your own ego, needs and preferences aside for someone else’s. We’re trying to make society better with people who face huge barriers to success in life, who have suffered serious injustices or who struggle to get by day-to-day. Our Fellows need to keep this perspective throughout the programme.

2014 FELLOW KATIE SYNTHESISES INSIGHTS FROM A USER RESEARCH EXERCISE AT THE SHIFT DESIGN STUDIO

APPROACH Year Here is a very different learning experience to what you may have become used to. Here are some of the aspects of our approach that are different to traditional educational practices:

EXPERIENTIAL Year Here is about experiential learning, learning by doing rather than being stuck in a lecture hall. We believe that real-world learning, where failure isn’t just a poor grade, can be messy and frustrating but ultimately more transformational than traditional education.

NO TEACHERS Our faculty are not teachers they are practitioners – running businesses, designing policy and working with communities. This keeps the course cutting edge and gives you access to a network of collaborators and opportunity-brokers.

NO CAMPUS The Year Here programme takes you all over the capital. Our learning sessions have taken place in everywhere from the Cabinet Office to Makerversity’s Lab and from a homeless shelter in Hornsey to Google.

AUTODIDACTIC The world is changing so rapidly that the skills you’ll need for tomorrow are not being taught anywhere today. The best thing you can do for yourself is to learn how to teach yourself anything. We are entrepreneurial about the way we teach ourselves new skills and approaches.

COLLABORATIVE We believe that a peer group can be a powerful tool for development – giving you a sounding board for new ideas, a source of well-intentioned honest feedback and a safe environment for personal reflection.

HOLISTIC We believe that social change involves head, heart and hands. Intellect, compassion and a propensity for action are all critical pieces of the puzzle and the Year Here learning experience acknowledges this.

CURRICULUM We aim to create the conditions for you to learn across three areas of focus.

At the heart of the Year Here learning journey is your leadership development. This might sound vague and less tangible than business models or project management but we believe it is the most fundamental cornerstone of your capacity for leadership and change. We also give Fellows the opportunity to build a professional toolkit to equip them to get things done in the working world. These are the skills that are essential for any career. Year Here offers you the chance to learn the social innovation skills that are critical to achieving change. We’re not going to make you into social innovation experts in just one year but we are going to take you on a tour of the relevant fields: power, money, data, design and technology.

Year Here’s take on social leadership We don’t think that you need to be the boss to be a leader or that having formal authority over others automatically makes you a leader. Leadership, for us, is about your capacity to influence and mobilise others towards a better world.

- The process of influencing and mobilising can take many forms from empowering, inspiring and persuading people to follow your lead to campaigning and agitating for change.

- ‘Others’ emphasises that leadership is a social process. And these ‘others’ could be anyone: your colleagues (juniors, peers or seniors), your customers, the beneficiaries of your work, the users of your service or the general public.

- “A better world” is obviously subjective but it requires the leader to consider the purpose of his/her efforts, as well as the most effective way of getting to the desired destination.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT Leadership is about how you relate to others, find a social purpose, develop a strategy for the change you want to initiate, approach challenges and difficulties, process and reflect on your experience. The leadership development process is facilitated by training sessions on the theory of behavioural science, opportunities to try out new approaches and push yourself out of your comfort zone in your placement and projects, and regular group reflection and individual feedback. We will aim to inculcate these five qualities in particular:

Purpose We aim to help you enhance your focus on, and clarity about, the purpose of your activities so that everything you do has a clear guiding objective and rationale. As Nietzche said “He who was a why to live can bear almost any how”.

Enquiry We will facilitate personal reflection as an essential part of the learning process. Reflective practice involves asking yourself challenging questions and feeling comfortable with constructive and critical responses.

Autodidacticism This is about learning how to learn, whether you’ve got a great teacher or not. We will push you to observe the world around you with insatiable curiosity and to push yourself out of your comfort zone to explore unfamiliar fields – from how to write a press release to macroeconomics.

Criticality Criticality starts with the question ‘Why?’. This should be resonating in your mind throughout the course as you seek to understand how social issues come to be and how we might be able to tackle them. We’ll encourage you to examine underlying assumptions and challenge received wisdom.

Hustle We want you to leave with the courage to aim high, the resourcefulness to make a lot happen with a little, and the perseverance to see your efforts through. As a leader, we will expect you to take the bold decisions that don’t always result in the easiest or most conventional course of action.

A HUMAN LIBRARY IN HACKNEY TOWN HALL SQUARE DESIGNED AND PRODUCED BY 2013 FELLOWS, JULY 2013

PROFESSIONAL TOOLKIT Fellows take on the roles of intrapraneur, during their Frontline Service Placement, consultant, during their Impact Consulting Project, and entrepreneur, during the Social Venture Incubator. Along with these experiences, we’ll help you gather the essentials so you can manage projects, run events, write brilliantly and feel comfortable dealing with financial information and research data.

Management You will enhance your ability to manage your own time and boost your productivity. You’ll develop confidence and proficiency in managing projects and processes. Specifically, you will learn how to:

- Develop project plans and gantt charts - Manage complex events – mapping user journeys and liaising with suppliers. - Find strategies to boost your productivity.

Communication Getting to grips with behavioural science, you will learn that everyone’s experience of the world is entirely subjective and use deep listening to develop more profound empathy for others. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

- Listen deeply and without judgement - Give and receive feedback with grace - Communicate with sensitivity - Facilitate creative brainstorms and action planning meetings - Write effectively – whether it’s press releases, blogs or funding proposals

Business You’ll pick up the key tools of business, boosting your professionalism and getting comfortable with data and financial information. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

- Pitch ideas compellingly - Develop budgets and financial models - Manipulate and interpret data

SOCIAL INNOVATION SKILLS Every placement, bootcamp and project will give you an opportunity to engage intellectually with the field of social innovation. Talks, mentoring sessions and 24-hour challenges will all be designed to help you grasp the key concepts and tools of social innovation.

Power From the highest echelons of influence to grass-roots community organising, we’ll learn about how decisions are made and how change is sparked. We will also consider the historical roots of society’s systems and structures and learn about British governmental and political systems.

Money From the economies of scale to perverse financial incentives, you’ll begin to understand how an individual organisation’s economic structure affects its capacity to improve society. Taking a step back, you’ll also consider how macroeconomic forces have social implications. You’ll learn about business models, philanthropy and social investment, and macroeconomics.

Data Without data – from human-level insight to quantitative information – you can’t design a product or service that really meets someone’s needs, know where to prioritise your efforts, or bring accountability to your efforts. You’ll learn about qualitative user research methods, data interpretation and impact measurement – as well as trends in open data and big data.

Design Creating new projects, policies and organisations is a process. We will give you the tools to navigate the process intelligently, using ‘design thinking’ rather than relying on hunch and intuition. You’ll learn about theory of change, ideation processes and prototyping.

Technology We’ve lived through a technological revolution which offers a myriad of opportunities to change the way we live, work and relate to each other. You’ll learn about the democratising power of technology and the potential for tech-enabled solutions to social problems.

PROGRAMME

FRONTLINE SERVICE PLACEMENT Your Frontline Service Placement may well be the most challenging part of your programme. You’ll spend just over 4 months getting to grips with the delivery of critical social services. This is an opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of some of London’s most disadvantaged, and develop relationships with people from all sorts of backgrounds. You’ll go on to lead a Frontline Innovation Project to develop an innovative solution to a problem you identify. Straight after Kickoff Bootcamp, you’ll be placed – on your own or in pairs – with a host organisation, stepping into the shoes of a homelessness support worker or perhaps those of an assistant in a care home. You’ll have a placement supervisor to give you direction and provide feedback. You will be asked for your sector preference (e.g. care or education) in your application – we take your preference into account but cannot guarantee that you will be offered a placement in your first choice sector.

FIRESIDE FRIDAYS Fireside Fridays are a time for Fellows to come together for some team time and reflection – and to work on independent projects. Speakers will come in to share their stories of social entrepreneurship, innovation and impact. You’ll hear from some of the most interesting innovators in the country and have a chance to debate some of the big issues of the day.

BOOTCAMPS Exhausting but exhilarating, bootcamps put you through your paces and help you build the skills you need to build great solutions to society’s problems.

KICKOFF BOOTCAMP Kickoff bootcamp is part welcome, part initiation. The incredibly action-packed week involves social innovation raids (action-oriented partner visits), your first 24 hour challenge, specialist training to prepare you for your frontline service placement, goal-setting and a handful of evening events around London to unwind and get to know other fellows.

INNOVATION BOOTCAMP This is where you start really developing your toolkit for action. You’ll learn about moving from insight gathering to coming up with ideas, prototyping and project management and we’ll challenge you to turbocharge your Frontline Innovation Project ideas.

CONSULTING KICKOFF Another action-packed week of learning, we’ll put you through your paces on professional skills – like project management, financial modelling and project proposal writing. We’ll also expose you to a vast bank of creative approaches to social change that you can incorporate into your community engagement work.

FUTURES WEEK In our final bootcamp together, you’ll look beyond Year Here, setting yourself grand ambitions and carving out your niche in the social impact world. We’ll introduce you to a range of cutting-edge employers, encourage you to reflect on what you’ve learnt about yourself and offer you the guidance you need to push your ideas forward and set you up for your next big career move. Our Fellows have gone on to work for, and run, some of Britain’s most well-regarded social ventures.

MAJOR PROJECTS Year Here gives you opportunity after opportunity to try your hand at building something that makes a difference. Whether it’s a new training workshop, a grassroots community project or a global tech platform, we’ll push you to develop ideas that are viable and high-impact.

FRONTLINE INNOVATION PROJECT Your Frontline Innovation Project is a chance to develop and execute an idea that improves outcomes for the people you work with in your placement. With a small budget of £300 from O2, you’ll build on the insights you’ve gathered to develop a new initiative. Previous Fellows have launched everything from curiosity clubs in schools that encourage students to pursue their interests in bold, creative ways to online platforms that connect care home residents with their relatives in the outside world in order to reduce loneliness.

IMPACT CONSULTING PROJECT The Impact Consulting Project is where you work for a government client organisation to use the tools of creative community engagement to deliver real social value. You’ll work in small teams, supported by the Year Here staff and our partners, Bain & Company, to deliver high-quality outputs for the client. You might work with residents to co-design a new childcare service or come up with imaginative regeneration plans for a run-down area. This project will give you a taste of the consulting role, learn about the interface between government and society, and flex your creative muscles.

SOCIAL VENTURE Once you’ve gathered insight from the ground-up, developed an initiative within your placement and heard from some of the country’s leading social entrepreneurs, it’s your turn. The Social Venture Incubator is a chance to try your hand at social entrepreneurship. Working alone or in small teams, you will identify an area you feel passionate about, and create your own social venture. We will take you through a creative process of idea generation and refinement, prototyping and development, ensuring you create something with the potential for sustainability. In just a few weeks we expect you to get your product or service out there with real users and real clients.

FINAL PROJECT Your Final Project is your manifesto for the future, a chance to work independently to pursue an interest that you’ve developed during the programme. It might be the business plan for your social venture, an investigation or report into an ignored social issue, or a community event or campaign. Whatever you want to do, we will use our expertise and network of social sector experts to support you to make it happen. We will facilitate you to produce an outcome that you can be proud of and that will set you up for your next steps. You will find your own Final Project advisor and attend tutorials with the Year Here team to advance the quality of your Final Project.

CROSS-CUTTING ELEMENTS Across the whole course, you’ll find various sources of support, inspiration and challenge.

MENTORING You will be allocated an individual mentor, a leading social entrepreneur, policy-maker or innovator, with whom you’ll meet monthly. You can use your mentoring time to explore social innovation-related challenges and any questions you have.

COACHING Throughout the programme, you’ll benefit from coaching to help you find your own leadership path, build your professional network and receive feedback about your performance. You will have three coaching sessions with the Year Here team throughout the programme. The first will be to help you find your feet in your placement. The second will be where you are shown the results of your 360-degree appraisal: a feedback-gathering exercise designed to give you a rich and objective picture of your performance. The final coaching session will help you explore next steps and agree career progression actions beyond the course.

WRITING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE Our Writing for Social Change unit, led by the co-founder of The School of Life, Sophie Howarth, will help you understand how writing can uncover injustice, prompt innovation and celebrate humanity. We will read and discuss some of the most seminal examples of social change writing and have a go ourselves as Sophie challenges you to develop your own writing style to tell the stories of the people you are working with in your placement.

BLOGGING AND PORTFOLIO-BUILDING Throughout the programme, you will blog about your experiences and insights – to share ideas and inspiration, and to crystallise your reflections and learning. We will offer you opportunities to publish your work on partner sites – like the Guardian’s Voluntary Sector Network, Nesta and the Social Innovation Exchange – and encourage you to pitch to national publications. You will also build up an online portfolio that will help you to introduce your work to potential employers and collaborators.

ENTERTAINMENT We also make our own fun along the way. Our tie-up with Field Day offers us free tickets for a bit of volunteering. Beer Here, an initiative of the 2013 Fellows, is a regular meetup for recent grads who are ambitious about making society better. The management of Beer Here will be handed over by the 2014 Fellows to the 2015 Fellows at the beginning of the year.

GRADUATION To graduate with a Year Here diploma, countersigned by industry specialists from government, philanthropy and social enterprise, you will need to:

- Participate actively throughout the programme; - Document your 4 major projects - Have your contribution to group projects validated by your peers. - Produce at least 3 blog posts/external outputs including:

o At least one published by a third party o At least one ‘Writing for Social Change’ piece

We bring your programme to a close with Grad Fest, a festival of social innovation. This is a chance for you to showcase your work and network with potential employers and partners. Provided you fulfil the requirements for graduation, you will receive a Year Here diploma, with endorsements from key industry leaders.

GRADUATION -

THE LAUNCH OF YEAR HERE’S INAUGURAL FELLOWSHIP, 10 DOWNING STREET, MARCH 2013