Sarah is part of the Altogether Better (ATB) programme which seeks to improve wellbeing in deprived communities by using Community Health Champions. These Champions are volunteers trained to deliver health messages to their social networks. The programme ends in 2012 so Sarah travelled to the USA and South Africa learn from similar programmes there in the hopes of gathering ideas on how to sustain the UK programme and scale up the approach after 2012.

Rachael works on the harmonious communities programme for the Leeds Initiative and visited Louisville, Kentucky and Durban, South Africa to better understand their successful approaches to community relations.

Laura works with socially excluded women in the UK, many of whom have been involved in sex work and have been sexually exploited. She travelled to Australia seeking good examples of integrated services. In the UK services tend to operate independently of each other, Laura hopes that her research will contribute to an improved and holistic service for this marginalised group of women.

Rob and Nikki Wilson travelled the length of Africa documenting the stories of inspirational people who are driving positive change for their communities, countries or the continent as a whole. Changemakers: Cape to Cairo will culminate in a book designed to inspire students and young people to get involved in volunteering and the charity sector.

Rob is a member of the Regional Empowerment Partnership for the East of England and was concerned about lack of civic participation in his area. He travelled to the USA to look at Community Organizers and to Brazil to look at Participatory Budgeting. The latter was developed in the late eighties and involves the general public participating in decision-making surrounding spending decisions.