• Question: How will what your spending the money on affect people.

    Asked by zaclev1299 to Debbie, Glyn, Jon, Kat, Nicola on 18 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Glyn Barrett

      Glyn Barrett answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      The reason why there is such a big scandal going on at the moment about horsemeat is because the food industry is dominated by a small number of very large international companies which rely on customer ignorance to increase their profit margin. The less people know about where their food is coming from the more the companies can manipulate their products.
      When you go into a supermarket all the products always look well presented, all individually wrapped in nice little packages. It all looks so proper and innocent. However, the processes which have gone on behind the scenes are incredible. Supermarket meat, for example, may have passed through the hands of more than a dozen traders and as many countries before it turns up on the shelf. It is very difficult to track as it passes from country and country and thus become “mislabeled” or even contaminated with dangerous bacteria.

      I would like to use the money to kickstart an education program into raising awareness in people and consumers of where their food comes from and getting them more in touch with it. By taking people to local farms where they can see production in action with their own eyes and buy local food (meat, vegetables, dairy etc) they will see all the benefits that this will have. This will benefit people’s health, support their local community and benefit their local environment. It is a win win situation and will affect people in many many positive ways.

      If you were really interested you should watch the film Food Inc. Its a really interesting documentary about the points I have raised above. Here is a link to the trailer on Youtube

    • Photo: Jonathan Stone

      Jonathan Stone answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      Great question! I want to spend the money on getting some equipment so that I can make some videos of towns and villages near volcanoes, from above. Basically I want people to be able to see themselves the way that the volcano sees them, so that they can appreciate just how close they might be to the volcano and the hazardous things that it causes.
      It is really difficult for us humans, who are not able to fly, to get different perspectives and understand where things are. This is a big problem on volcanoes, sometimes people want to evacuate, but they simply don’t know which way to go in order to get to a safe place. With the money, I will buy a small quadcopter uav , which I can attach a camera to and get young people to fly over their villages near volcanoes. I also want to be able to inspire young people in the UK about some of the cool and innovative things that they could do as scientists in order to solve problems like the one that I hope to solve. I really want to win so that I can do this!!

    • Photo: Nicola Fletcher

      Nicola Fletcher answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      Well, I have decided that if I win, I am going to split the money in two. The first half I want to give to a charity called TASTE which has a mobile lab that travels around schools in Uganda, Africa. This is really important for school children whose schools can’t build their own science lab, so this travelling lab lets them do experiments and learn a lot about science, which they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

      The other half of the money I would use so that science teachers could spend some time in my lab. I think this would be really great for science teachers who could learn new lab techniques and new discoveries in science. This would mean that they could then teach these to their students which I think would be really great as it would make science more interesting, up to date and useful for students.

    • Photo: Debbie Crockard

      Debbie Crockard answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      I’m hoping that the money will help me let people who don’t live near the sea connect with it. it is such a hugely important part of our culture and environment that I want to share it with people and help them see the beauty that I see when I’m at sea 🙂

      It is also important that people realise the problems that we have – like overfishing, pollution and environmental damage which not only impact us but impact our children and granchildren.

      I heard something this weekend that brought it all home to me:

      Take a deep breath, then another one.
      One of those breaths came from the ocean.
      And that’s why we need to protect it.

    • Photo: Kathryn McMahon

      Kathryn McMahon answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      I’m hoping the money will have a positive effect on the kids in our local area. I work in a pretty poor area of Leeds where most of the kids don’t stay on after the age of 16. Even though we work in the middle of this community, they have no idea what we do and we don’t talk to them very much. I would like to change that. I’m realistic, and don’t expect that with a few school visits I will turn them into lab scientists, but what I am hoping is that I can fire up their interest and that they’ll enjoy the visit. Anything to help them get interested in science so that they enjoy their lessons, and maybe stay in school longer. I also want to make them aware of all the things you can do with a science degree as these kids will often come from families where no-one has been to university (even though they may be very bright).

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