The We Are What We Do Foundation

The We Are What We Do Charitable Foundation was established in 2010 to harness the success of our high profile social and environmental work in local communities and across education.

The Foundation delivers projects that are guided by three main principles:

i) Empowerment – the Foundation’s core purpose is to inspire, equip and support local people and students to use our approach and our tools to take the lead in their neighbourhoods. We believe that the only route to bringing about sustained behaviour change and fostering “bridging” social capital is by handing over control of our ideas to the local people that will apply and sustain them in their schools and communities.

ii) Inclusion – at a national and international level, our work is delivered through channels that allow us to engage a mass consumer audience, such as retail distribution, online tools and national media partnerships. At a local level, our Foundation delivers work through a much wider range of channels that reach a much wider range of audiences.

iii) Collaboration – the majority of the Foundation’s work is delivered in partnership with national, regional and local organisations, harnessing their experience and resources and adding value to, rather than duplicating, their existing work.

Projects

1. Historypin Community and Education Programmes

The Foundation harnesses the Historypin digital tools to deliver local community and educational programmes.

Within communities, the Foundation’s work aims to increase mutual feelings of value and understanding across different generations; increase feelings of local connectedness and cohesion; increase digital inclusion and digital literacy; increase the health and well-being of older people.

Within education, the Foundation aims to deliver Historypin’s educational potential, across formal and informal learning, as both a passive, exploratory experience and as an active, collaborative experience.

To see examples of this work, visit the Community section of Historypin.com

Read more about the aims and methods of the Foundation’s Historypin work.

2. Internet Buttons and digital inclusion in communities

The Foundation’s digital inclusion team uses the Internet Buttons tool and works closely in partnership with a series of community and digital partners to make a major contribution to the reduction of digital exclusion at a community level.

There are currently 9 million digitally excluded people in the UK. This problem has a series of consequences for those suffering from exclusion, for their families, friends and communities, for the delivery of national and local government and for society as a whole.

Specifically, our digital inclusion work in communities aims to increase online and offline communication and reduce social exclusion of older people.

To see examples of this work, visit our Internet Buttons case study.

Read more about the insights that inform the Foundation’s digital inclusion work

3. The Action Tracker and empowering young people as activists

The Action Tracker is a tool that has been used by 150,000 people to track almost 5 million Actions online and the Foundation delivers a series of programmes that take this tool into schools.

This work is based around a series of online and offline tools and materials developed specifically for schools. By bringing a high profile brand, original materials and a distinctive tone of voice into schools, we have been in a unique position to engage pupils and teachers in different ways, inspiring mass participation and creativity in a range of contexts.

In all our education work, we develop and pilot resources and projects by working closely with groups of schools, teachers and children. After an intensive period of testing, consultation and pilot work, we make the resources openly available online to widen participation nationally to all schools.  By working together with teachers and children, we also develop educational products that are mainstream and accessible to all.

To see examples of this work, visit our Action Tracker case study.

Read more details about the aims and methods of the Foundation’s Action-based schools work.