IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Company limited by guarantee

Company Registration Number:
11137433 (England and Wales)

Unaudited statutory accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023

Period of accounts

Start date: 1 January 2023

End date: 31 December 2023

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Contents of the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

Directors report
Profit and loss
Balance sheet
Additional notes
Balance sheet notes
Community Interest Report

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Directors' report period ended 31 December 2023

The directors present their report with the financial statements of the company for the period ended 31 December 2023

Additional information

Directors’ Forward 2023 was a challenging year for IDEMS. We entered the year with a transition mindset focusing our efforts on growing IDEMS to the next level; we exit it proud to have survived and planning to consolidate before our next growth spurt. As directors, we have had to make difficult decisions, including cutting back our education work and our team. However, we are cautiously optimistic that we are navigating this existential challenge with the potential to emerge stronger and better prepared for growth on the other side. Looking beyond our challenges, 2023 has been a great year! All our areas of work are maturing with stories of social impact emerging. The year saw IDEMS affected by health challenges, skills gaps and most importantly a global market slow down. For the first time IDEMS did not grow and was not in profit for the year. We have coped with challenges before, while maintaining profitability and growth; however, we now recognise many of this year's challenges were linked to global trends beyond our control. We were a bit slow to realise the change of environment and that the lack of new opportunities was related to the global economic situation. With hindsight, our prioritisation and decision making in the first half of the year aggravated the situation as we were trying to lean into further growth when we should have been cautiously consolidating. However, once the situation became clear, we acted decisively and drastically, balancing our finances without jeopardising the quality of our work. The way the team came together to face the difficult times and rise to our new challenge was humbling and inspirational. The vision behind IDEMS set out an aggressive growth agenda for a social organisation. We always recognised this was a risky strategy. After five years averaging over 60% growth in profit while prioritising social impact, we hit a bump in the road in 2023. We are proud of how we have navigated this period without compromising our vision, quality or ethics. This ability to come through tough times without compromise is a testament to the team and foundation we have built. This experience has also highlighted skills gaps, particularly related to communication skills, which we need to fill before pursuing directed growth. Danny’s ongoing health challenges had an impact in 2023, most notably creating a gap in our climate work where his need to step back led to project delays and deliverables at risk. We successfully recruited to fill this gap and are finishing the year confident that we are on track to meet our deliverables and drive this work forward in the new year. Navigating the unavailability of a key team member is difficult at the best of times, but we had to do so while the organisation was already facing challenges, and we are grateful for our partners' patience and understanding. We enter 2024 determined to strengthen IDEMS’ foundations so that we can pursue our ambitions responsibly. Despite this year's challenges, all areas of our work are progressing impressively, each with demonstrable social impact while building towards scalable products. We now recognise the additional skills we need to transition IDEMS towards being a tech startup and we are recruiting non-executive directors to help us prepare for this. Despite finishing the year with a loss for the first time, we are optimistic that using 2024 to consolidate will enable us to resume our ambitious plans in 2025 or 2026 building from a more solid foundation. About IDEMS IDEMS International (IDEMS) is a not-for-profit company devoted to Innovations in Development, Education, and the Mathematical Sciences. Our mission is to work collaboratively with diverse partners to enable the evolution of innovations which can impact lives all over the world. IDEMS International was founded in 2018, by mathematical scientists with long term experience working in education and development, looking to achieve wider impact beyond academia. We are passionate about projects related to development, education, and the mathematical sciences, and particularly work that can impact more than one of these areas. As a company we are motivated by our social mission, transparency in our accounting and guided by our principles. IDEMS International is legally registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company. This structure enables us to be defined by the communities we serve while doing business commercially. Serving a community gives us a sense of purpose beyond our own self-interest as individuals, or even as a company. IDEMS International supports and collaborates with INNODEMS, which was established by our partners in Kenya in 2019. INNODEMS follows a similar business model to IDEMS International as a route to creating sustainable opportunities for our Kenyan colleagues. We also support partners in West Africa, with GHAIDEMS registered in Ghana in 2022, alongside colleagues in Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin. Our Team Our team has been tested this year. For the first time we have had to let people go due to their work not aligning with our income streams, while simultaneously recruiting to deliver on contracts at risk. Our financial difficulties and these changes of personnel was a shock to the core team who felt the pressure of our situation. This could have been catastrophic if the IDEMS culture got lost, but the whole team has pulled together to face these challenges, strengthening our organisational culture. Looking forward we expect to take a year or two to consolidate our core team before pursuing rapid growth again. The need for communicators to tell our stories is a high priority as we prepare to scale our products and impact. Major Activities 2023 included noteworthy activities related to our four main areas of impact and launched the IDEMS Podcast. In Agroecology our ongoing work supporting research methods and the AE Hub has been substantially strengthened by our expanding team. The big advance has been our new collaboration with CASAS Global on mathematical modelling. This kicked off well with a physical meeting where we were exposed to the PBDM (physiologically-based demographic modelling) approach and found great alignment of purpose and values. The CASAS collaboration is particularly satisfying as it is pushing us to engage in cutting-edge mathematical research with direct application. IDEMS’ role as the innovation lead in the Global Parenting Initiative, led by the University of Oxford, has continued to dominate our attention in a very positive way. INNODEMS’ increasing role has been inspirational with their team claiming ownership of the app development processes related to Parenting for Respectability and a Facilitator App in Uganda and Zambia respectively. The highlight has to be the build up to the Randomised Control Trial of ParentApp in Tanzania, and ParentText 2.0 in South Africa. The first full results are expected in 2024 as the culmination of a research process that started in 2019. Initial pilot and optimisation results have exceeded our expectations and we are hopeful for good news through the course of next year. ePICSA has been a big advance in our climate work. The digital infrastructure we are building is being put in place to enable the meteorological services in Zambia and Malawi to prepare their historical data to populate the ePICSA app which supports farmer decision making. R-Instat is playing a critical role in enabling capacity building and the meteorological services in both countries are requesting further training even beyond their requirements for ePICSA. Within our education work the collaboration with the University of Edinburgh on STACK deserves a special mention. This has been formalised through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership through which we have co-recruited an exceptional postdoctoral fellow. This builds from our work supporting colleagues in Kenya, Ethiopia and beyond who have formed the African STACK community with the first African STACK conference taking place in Kakamega, Kenya. The IDEMS Podcast has transformed communication within our team. David has committed to releasing two episodes every week to discuss ideas big and small related to IDEMS. Three team members have committed to engage in open discussions on topics of their choosing, to deepen their own understanding and inform others. Although the podcast is released publicly, it is initially conceived for the internal IDEMS audience. If successful, we plan to move toward a more external audience through the course of 2024 as we gain experience. Finances IDEMS International ended year six with a loss for the first time. Our income remained almost constant at around £1 Million with a loss of over £350,000 after impact investments but before R&D tax credits. Our full accounts are provided for transparency. We used loans and investment to support cash flow, including a large loan from the Charities Aid Foundation, a coronavirus ‘Bounce Back’ loan, short term personal loans and our first long term investment bonds. We remain committed to our investment strategy but recognise that we have failed to execute it due to a skills gap. While our core team remained roughly consistent with the end of 2022, that was an increase on the average for 2022. Our subcontractor costs were higher for the first three quarters of 2023, but this was cut substantially in the final quarter. Cash in hand remains high as we are continuing to hold multi-year grant funds in a dedicated account. In the first half of 2023 we continued to invest in education activities, largely in Africa. The increase in this effort from the end of 2022 increased the impact of this work but did not immediately lead to work in this area and this was cut back as our financial situation changed. Refection Points Our incredible team is resilient. In 2022 our team grew and diversified considerably. We reflected at the end of that year on what an impressive team had been assembled. 2023 has not been easy and everyone has been affected. We maintained a transparent approach throughout, which was both appreciated and stressful. In the end, as directors, we took tough decisions which appear to have been enough to balance our books while avoiding negative impacts on team culture and morale. The importance of proceeding with the full in-person team meeting to discuss our financial challenges and rebuild confidence in our future cannot be overstated. It was here that we as directors recognised how supportive and understanding our team is. The way that everyone focussed on what they could do to help the organisation rebound was inspirational. We do not yet know how to tell IDEMS stories. The first half of 2023 saw David engaged in trying to tell people about IDEMS. Although in our minds we have clarity, it is complicated and this exercise highlighted the challenge of communicating complex ideas simply without trivialising them. The IDEMS Podcast emerged as a way to capture the complexity and depth of our thinking, however we recognise the importance of telling our stories simply and we do not yet know how to do this. We have identified this as a skills gap within our team and are putting on hold efforts to tell our stories simply until we fill this gap. Adversity might build good foundations. In 2023 IDEMS faced existential challenges for the first time. The way that the IDEMS team has dealt with the threat has strengthened us as directors and the team as a whole. There is a sense of confidence and stability which has emerged from us acting when needed and without overreacting. We have always felt fortunate in the past, ‘riding our luck’ in terms of balance and timing, so there was always a question mark about how we would cope if we were not lucky. In 2023 many things did not go our way, our luck ran out, but we are still standing. IDEMS may not have grown this year and we have taken on debt, but we did not have to compromise. Our work is socially impactful and our team is incredible. We come out of this a little more cautious about our place in the world but also more confident in ourselves, possibly a healthy place to be before we embark on our next growth spurt. Looking ahead We finish the year having made a loss for the first time, recognising it will take a few years to consolidate. But as we finish the year looking forward to 2024, consolidation does not feel bad, it feels comfortable and stable. Consolidation gives us time to reflect on our achievements, tell our stories and identify allies. We know that our ambitions for IDEMS will require us to embark on further growth spurts but we recognise the need for new skills and insights to take those next steps. We enter the new year advertising for Non-Executive Directors. We don’t know who they will be or exactly how we will make best use of them, but are excited by the possibility of bringing in new voices.



Directors

The directors shown below have held office during the whole of the period from
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023

Daniel Parsons
David Stern


The above report has been prepared in accordance with the special provisions in part 15 of the Companies Act 2006

This report was approved by the board of directors on
24 September 2024

And signed on behalf of the board by:
Name: David Stern
Status: Director

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Profit And Loss Account

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

2023 2022


£

£
Turnover: 1,015,441 950,435
Cost of sales: ( 596,107 ) ( 333,716 )
Gross profit(or loss): 419,334 616,719
Administrative expenses: ( 767,228 ) ( 672,295 )
Operating profit(or loss): (347,894) (55,576)
Interest receivable and similar income: 92
Interest payable and similar charges: ( 8,993 ) ( 1,769 )
Profit(or loss) before tax: (356,795) (57,345)
Tax: 104,994 148,077
Profit(or loss) for the financial year: (251,801) 90,732

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Balance sheet

As at 31 December 2023

Notes 2023 2022


£

£
Fixed assets
Intangible assets:   0 0
Tangible assets: 3 3,948 5,497
Investments:   0 0
Total fixed assets: 3,948 5,497
Current assets
Debtors: 4 452,024 418,699
Cash at bank and in hand: 172,163 170,545
Investments:   0 0
Total current assets: 624,187 589,244
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year: 5 ( 398,712 ) ( 385,999 )
Net current assets (liabilities): 225,475 203,245
Total assets less current liabilities: 229,423 208,742
Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year: 6 ( 360,959 ) ( 88,477 )
Provision for liabilities: 0 0
Total net assets (liabilities): (131,536) 120,265
Members' funds
Profit and loss account: (131,536) 120,265
Total members' funds: ( 131,536) 120,265

The notes form part of these financial statements

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Balance sheet statements

For the year ending 31 December 2023 the company was entitled to exemption under section 477 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies.

The members have not required the company to obtain an audit in accordance with section 476 of the Companies Act 2006.

The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Act with respect to accounting records and the preparation of accounts.

These accounts have been prepared and delivered in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies regime.

This report was approved by the board of directors on 24 September 2024
and signed on behalf of the board by:

Name: David Stern
Status: Director

The notes form part of these financial statements

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

  • 1. Accounting policies

    Basis of measurement and preparation

    These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the provisions of Section 1A (Small Entities) of Financial Reporting Standard 102

    Tangible fixed assets depreciation policy

    Tangible assets are included at cost less depreciation and impairment. Depreciation has been provided at the following rates in order to write off the assets over their estimated useful lives: Office Equipment 33.3% per annum

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

  • 2. Employees

    2023 2022
    Average number of employees during the period 14 12

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

3. Tangible assets

Land & buildings Plant & machinery Fixtures & fittings Office equipment Motor vehicles Total
Cost £ £ £ £ £ £
At 1 January 2023 13,869 13,869
Additions 2,759 2,759
Disposals
Revaluations
Transfers
At 31 December 2023 16,628 16,628
Depreciation
At 1 January 2023 8,372 8,372
Charge for year 4,308 4,308
On disposals
Other adjustments
At 31 December 2023 12,680 12,680
Net book value
At 31 December 2023 3,948 3,948
At 31 December 2022 5,497 5,497

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

4. Debtors

2023 2022
£ £
Trade debtors 77,198 63,685
Prepayments and accrued income 230,765 170,076
Other debtors 144,061 184,938
Total 452,024 418,699
Debtors due after more than one year: 39,067 39,067

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

5. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year note

2023 2022
£ £
Bank loans and overdrafts 10,000 10,000
Trade creditors 67,684 35,998
Taxation and social security 16,603 30,453
Accruals and deferred income 32,923 64,732
Other creditors 271,502 244,816
Total 398,712 385,999

Other creditors includes £ 255,728 which relates to a grant received not utilised. Of this £ 131,062 is held in a separate bank account which is included in Cash at bank and in hand.

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 December 2023

6. Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year note

2023 2022
£ £
Bank loans and overdrafts 196,845 25,000
Other creditors 164,114 63,477
Total 360,959 88,477

The bank loans are unsecured. Other creditors includes loan notes of £ 34,000 which is repayable in more than 5 years.

COMMUNITY INTEREST ANNUAL REPORT

IDEMS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY

Company Number: 11137433 (England and Wales)

Year Ending: 31 December 2023

Company activities and impact

PART 1 - GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COMPANY’S ACTIVITIES AND IMPACT In the space provided below, please insert a general account of the company’s activities in the financial year to which the report relates, including a description of how they have benefited the community. IDEMS’ approach to achieving impact, which shapes the activities we carry out, combines our expertise in development, education and the mathematical sciences. This often entails the development of technologies or data science approach to support partners working in international development. Through this approach, we contribute to improved professional and academic outcomes in development projects and the strengthening of education systems, especially in difficult environments. Our work this year broadly falls into the same four main areas as previously: agroecology, social development, climate and education. The benefits of our work in these areas for our community this year is outlined below. Agroecology (West Africa) This year we have continued to focus support on smallholder farmers within their local contexts and practices. Increasingly this focus is combined with large scale analysis enabled by gathering ‘big data’ from a rich and varied set of participants. This entails reinventing research approaches to embrace a huge diversity in farmer experimentation by adapting methodologies that can be implemented at scale while staying true to core scientific principles. Despite often letting go of traditional academic notions of 'rigour,' this means farmers are able to define their priorities and evaluate results on their own terms (rather than according to external conventions). We have started a new partnership with CASAS Global to improve the usability and expand the accessibility of their Population Based Demographic Models (PBDM) system. Whereas existing approaches to managing crop, pest and plant disease ecosystems rely on observation data (and so can only confirm causes retrospectively), PBDMs can model future scenarios and predict the spread of insect disease and crop damage in advance. This gives them the potential to transform agricultural risk assessment and decision making, benefitting farmers by helping them avoid crop losses. In Burkina Faso, we designed and delivered training for students and lecturers covering research, methods, data science and Responsible AI. In this way, the learning and benefits of our applied research feed into the education of the next generation of African agroecologists. In Mali, we collaborated with a local researcher to convert traditional paper questionnaires into digital ODK forms that are accessible to farmers with little formal education. This benefits farmers by directly representing their expertise and experience in research and practice, and enables more efficient processing of questionnaires into results. Agroecology (Agroecology Hub (AE Hub) in East Africa) In 2023 we continued to work on the AE Hub database at Manor House Agricultural Centre to develop and tailor it to support local initiatives. We also connected our agroecology projects in East and West Africa to enable sharing of ideas about working with ‘big data’ and data collection apps, as noted above, benefitting participants through cross-fertilisation and peer support. This year we also completed and reported on the Tephrosia school project in Kenya. This was an experiment to test the possibilities of involving primary school students in scientific data collection for Farmer Research Networks, and a biopesticide test of using Tephrosia vogelii to control chicken pests. The study concluded that the project created a range of applied learning benefits for the school children involved. Climate Launched in 2022, our EPICSA project in Zambia and Malawi made significant advances towards making local climate and crop forecasts available to farmers and extension workers nationwide. The data system feeding information into the mobile app has been designed and initially implemented. Stakeholders working in both National Meteorological Service (NMS) headquarters and district offices have benefitted from data management and climate product development training. Data rescue work continues to underpin projects such as EPICSA and the reliability of forecasting by NMS in a range of countries across Africa and the Caribbean. In tandem with this data rescue work, NMS in countries from Barbados to Kyrgyzstan are investing in their climate data management and analytics capacity through training in methods and R-Instat (our open statistical software extensively customised for climate work). The public and a variety of civil, agricultural and industrial sectors benefit from the improved use of climate data leads to. Social development Our contribution to the Global Parenting Initiative (GPI) this year focused on improving the technical infrastructure that underpins a fast-growing range of localised applications deployed with Oxford University in Africa, Asia and South America. Strengthening the capabilities of this infrastructure (our ‘digital ecosystem’) means end user communities can build the tools they need more quickly, easily and with greater flexibility. Started in 2022, our project to build chat services with young people to improve sexual and reproductive health in Jamaica was completed and handed over this year. In a country where unsafe practices, coercion and stigma limits health, wellbeing and life chances, young people (and public services) benefit from the service as a space to learn about positive approaches and challenge negative traditions. UNICEF’s Interet of Good Things (IoGT) continues to expand and this year we have supported the launch of five new sites, including one (supply.goodinternet.org) to gather feedback on Inter-Agency Health Kits distributed in response to the Turkey/Syria earthquake and the crisis in Gaza. Wide sections of these populations benefit from having IoGT as a tool for humanitarian aid. Education Our direct contribution to education programmes this year included teaching on the AIMS Ghana Masters Programme (statistical problem solving) as well as supporting local lecturers to develop their skills and curricula - benefitting both local institutions and students. Part of our long-term investment in STACK (a maths learning platform), we co-facilitated workshops with Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology in Kenya and Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia to support their implementation of the platform for local courses. STACK’s formative learning approach benefits students and staff in supporting changes to the national curricula, specifically adopting a formative learning pedagogy. Following the success of our Responsible AI course developed for the Turing Institute, this year we developed and delivered a related seminar programme for Sage which we have repackaged into open learning resources for future use. Having partnered with Early Family Math (EFM) in the US to develop their numeracy and literacy programmes, in 2023 we integrated the EFM into our GPI programmes in Kenya to evaluate the potential of digital mathematics stories and activities in promoting playful parent-child learning. Families in the pilot benefitted from improved learning relationships and GPI developed a broader understanding of playful learning and quality parent-child interactions.

Consultation with stakeholders

In 2023 we explored new ways to consult with our stakeholders, and involve them directly to varying degrees in the planning and delivery of our work. Key mechanisms and responses are outlined below. Agroecology Consultation Peer consultation with participants in the CCRP and CRFS Community of Practice. Feedback Researchers and practitioners are seeking capacity building and career pathways that are both long term and flexible. Response We have defined a three step professional development programme for research methods specialists in West Africa. Young professionals can progress from an internship to a two-year apprenticeship to a two-year junior fellowship to support their individual outputs and wider community impacts. Consultation Feedback from stakeholders and evaluation of Tephrosia schools project. Feedback Integrating school pupils into agroecology research enhanced children’s wider education. It is less clear whether pupils are reliable data collectors. Response We’re aiming to undertake further trials to build on the wider benefits and test the research role. Initially we’re exploring working with older students utilising a similar citizen science approach to generate local pest identification datasets. Social development Consultation Ongoing consultation with family users across countries and services. Feedback Attending in-person programmes is challenging for both families and local partners. Response Hybrid deployments may offer an optimal balance between the cost and impact of in-person delivery and the efficiencies and accessibility of digital support. We’re developing a hybrid programme to specifically evaluate this approach in 2024. Consultation Discussions and feedback from iCare participants. Feedback Participants broadly valued the support provided, but often found the timing and continuity of provision didn’t easily align with their existing projects. Response The idea of providing small amounts of targeted support to help organisations was broadly validated. But without dedicated capacity, or incorporation into longer-term projects, the impact of support is limited. We will review and rethink this approach. Climate Consultation Surveys, interviews and evaluation with EPICSA users. Feedback The EPICSA app is useful for end users ,farmers, extension workers, and the related data management work with government departments increased their skills and service provision. Access to digital devices and connectivity, phones for users, PCs for remote NMS staff, remains a key barrier. Response We are exploring the availability of low cost devices for NMS workers, and other ways to use the app to provide additional support to end users to increase its value. Education Consultation Engagement with lecturers in our education networks. Feedback Educators requested support to deal with the increasing challenge of student use of AI to produce course work. Response We have explored options to support reframing the problem from students cheating to lecturers teaching and developed an open course ,Responsible AI for Lecturers, to support their professional development. Consultation We have worked with lecturers in under-resourced environments to understand their teaching needs. Feedback Lecturers requested support with curriculum development and delivery, e.g. opportunities to update the content and delivery of existing curricula, using appropriate digital tools. Response We are continuing to develop open source curriculum content and seeking investment to update specific curricula ,e.g. in Ethiopia and Kenya. Social impact and organisational development Consultation Consultation with potential and actual financial investors. Feedback Strengthening external governance and accountability would provide investors with greater confidence. Response We have put plans in place to establish an Advisory Board of non-executive directors and a supporting recruitment schedule of activities.

Directors' remuneration

The aggregate amount of emoluments paid to or receivable by directors in respect of qualifying services was £102,437. The value of company contributions paid to a pension scheme in respect of directors’ qualifying services was £13,619. There were no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of directors or compensation for director’s loss of office which require to be disclosed. Full details are provided in the company’s accounts.

Transfer of assets

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration

This report was approved by the board of directors on
24 September 2024

And signed on behalf of the board by:
Name: David Stern
Status: Director