My Changemakers Lab Experience

I remember coming across the open call to apply for World Pulse's Changemakers Lab and knowing that I wanted to be a part of this wonderful community. I was most certainly thrilled when I received an email on being accepted into the programme!

When I first started in the programme, I was at the ideation phase of The Bold Collective (TBC), which is a collective seeking to empower those who identify as women, especially women in the global south, with the skills, resources, and opportunities needed to be bold and choose to continue in growing their financial independence by choosing to remote work or starting digital businesses. TBC seeks to impact 5000 individuals in 5 years.

Since reviewing lessons of the various modules during the lab, with conversations had with potential partners and people in the community, and putting in place operational processes, I have learnt that it is ok to not start where I would like to but more importantly to start where I can.

From my learnings during the Changemakers Lab lessons, I have been able to relook at some aspects of my approaches to operationalising the TBC initiative.

1. Adopting systems thinking approaches (eg: iceberg) to look out for mindsets that need to shift to better address underlying root causes to problems. If some root causes are too big to address at this point, to then keep them in mind and address them when TBC is able to, and to design interventions with these nuances in mind. 
   
2. Instead of building an edtech platform from scratch, I have since pivoted to looking at leveraging existing tech platforms that host features that still meet TBC objectives, desired key features, and reasonable user experience. In the mean time, I am also in talks with Founders in the impact space who have come forward to assist in building a low fidelity prototype so that features can be tested and the TBC community can be onboarded on while working towards building a higher fidelity product platform in the future.
3. Initially, I was designing a full curriculum based on a few key identified learner personas and was looking at having learners go through a full course. However, having relooked the communities TBC is working with and their needs, the community-based curriculum and execution is now more focused on piloting some parts of the curriculum offerings and adapting from there. This would entail developing a plan for assessing local needs and resources, ensures that resources are concentrated on a few key workshops first, and adapting the curriculum based on feedback collated to co-design the entirety of the curriculum further down the line along with the community.
4. Another lesson on community partnerships, was a reminder that instead of starting from scratch in building a community, it would help to work with existing organisations that have an engaged community of women that they already reach out to and have an understanding of their needs and demographics so that interventions and offerings can be better catered to them. 
5. Most importantly, through the World Pulse community, I was inspired by many others who are already doing incredible work in nudging positive change in the direction of making the world a better place. I was reminded to support one another and that it is important to build mutually beneficial partnerships, where possible, and beyond that, to nurture friendships where we show up and support one another.