This week, we really got into the nitty gritty data collection and analysis for our project. Our main Statement of Work outlined we are to audit the READ India model, make recommendations to strengthen their existing 40 centres, and propose a strategy framework for their expansion to double reach within five years. Most of the last two weeks were spent trying to understand their model, the stakeholders and players, and how the centres operate - from both a financial and ownership/stewardship perspective.
For READ, they are awarded national and international CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funding to construct/build new centres to promote education and opportunity in rural areas. Behind that, I would have never imagined how much each centre impacts the community but also how the community taking ownership is pivotal to their success. Over the last two weeks, we visited multiple centres, met with beneficiaries, women and children enrolled in courses, teachers, education consultants, READ India staff, doctors (who built the health awareness courses), and READ Global staff. After all our interviews, we have just started to get a better understanding of READs operating model and some of the challenges they were facing.
The Centre Staff, READ India, READ Global and the Donors all interact together to ensure the centres success and it’s for this reason we decided to do a design workshop session.
IBM Design Thinking is a methodology used to help groups collaborate and generate new ideas focused around the user. For the purposes of our workshops, decided to focus on the beneficiaries as the primary users. After all, the centres are for them and ultimately by them. In order to help generate ideas, we ran some exercises to better understand each stakeholder goals, their inhibitions, how each group relates to one another, and some new things to try. We had staff from READ India, the centres, and other stakeholder all in room.
We went through 3 exercises to help us narrow down our scope.
Hopes and Fears: this exercise tasked each participant to brainstorm their hopes for the centres’ future and what they feared. This was beneficial to understanding everyone’s shared goals, and what future challenges they expect. We could then synthesize that data and better understand how our recommendation could help mitigate some of those future challenges
Empathy Maps: this exercise really tasked each participant to put themselves in another person’s role; somebody else’s shoes. We used 4 personas for different members involved in the community centres’ operation and had each participant brainstorm what they believe that person Feels, Says, Thinks and Does. This allowed everyone in to the rooms to see gaps in the current model and how different perceptions may be influencing actions.
Feedback Grid: this final exercise was used to build off the previous two allowing us to focus on the three main pillars of READs model: Education, Community Development and Enterprise. The team members were then instructed map out what they felt was working, things that could be changed, questions they still had, and new ideas for the centres under each pillar
What this day-long working session provided was more understanding of the human elements than we could have ever asked for. It was very clear that the mission of READ had not changed; each person in that room was dedicated to working with the communities and for the betterment of the beneficiaries. What did change however was the challenges they were facing as they grew. It was from this session we were able to clearly articulate and discuss with the team areas for improvement as the double over the next 5 years. These discussions will be a major component in our final deliverable.
