Highlights & Lessons from Our First Community Event in Chicago

Our mission is to inspire and support individuals to create a positive impact in their local communities. Sure, brainstorming and solving challenges over Skype and Google Hangouts can open doors to international communities, but if our mission is to instill change in local communities, we need to innovate and act to better communities in our own cities. So we did just that.

On Wednesday, November 20th, Impaction CEO, Shivani Chokshi, led 15 people in a workshop held at Depaul University’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center that was aimed to map and “solve” some of the most prominent social challenges that currently face the city: education inequality, high crime rates, and lack of affordable housing.

Please read our report below to find out more about the workshop!

Impaction CEO, Shivani Chokshi, presents the organization’s mission to the cohort.

Part 1: Challenge Mapping

The workshop started with a Challenge Mapping exercise where participants were split into groups and were given narratives about education inequality, high crime rates, and lack of affordable housing. These narratives described the social challenge more in depth. The purpose of this exercise was to create a shared understanding of a social challenge and to outline all of the obstacles related to it. Once participants were able to more aptly understand various components of the challenge, we hypothesized that the participants would be more likely to “solve” those individual obstacles (see Part 2: Solutions Prompt below). To read the Challenge narratives distributed during this activity, please follow this link.

After the cohort read the narratives, they were given the task of mapping obstacles that can cause that challenge to occur in the system. For example, the team working on the “education inequality” challenge listed current budget models, charter school expansions, and selective enrollment as obstacles that may cause education inequality to occur in Chicago (see picture below).*

Lee Rowbotham (pictured left) and Tania Toledo (pictured right) from the “education inequality” group map out their challenge and obstacles.

Once the participants finished the “Challenge Mapping” exercise, they were instructed to label each challenge according to a respective color based on the stakeholder that they believed was to be held accountable for creating that challenge in the system. Groups could assign more than one label to each challenge:

1. (Blue) Structural/Systemic Challenges occur when the structure of power and authority (i.e. corporations, government, etc.) are responsible for causing that challenge.
2. (Yellow) Cultural/Familial Challenges occur when society is responsible for instilling the social culture that causes the challenge.
3. (Green) Behavioral/Psychological Challenges occur when the effects of individual psychological states are responsible for causing the challenge.
4. (Pink) Individual Challenges occur when individuals’ habits and goals can result in wasteful or harmful social practices that cause the challenge.

The groups then shared some patterns they saw across their bubbles:

• Every group labeled institutions, such as governments and corporations, as being the most responsible for these social issues we see today.
• Society and individuals were perceived as the least accountable for all sectors.

Matsuo Marti (pictured left) and Brad Jeffery (pictured right) from the “lack of affordable housing” group discuss how a majority of their obstacles occur as a result of institutional structures.

Part 2: Solutions Prompt

After Challenge Mapping, the participants moved on to creating “solutions” for each challenge bubble. We asked participants to create solutions for each question listed in the prompt below to challenge their creative and innovative skills:

1. Create a solution that requires 2–3 people to execute that would need to make use of a natural environment (park, beach, lake, etc.).
2. Create a solution a 5-year-old would create.
3. Create a solution that requires you to act — what can YOU do to solve this challenge?
4. Create an easy-to-use technological solution that requires partnership opportunities to succeed.

They were then asked to share their solutions with the group. For question #1, innovators from the “high crime rates” group suggested that they could create a solution where police would volunteer in local events with residents from the neighborhood to increase empathy and understanding between both types of members in the community.**

Andre Anthony (pictured left) and Kayla Kraft (pictured right) from the “high crime rates” group discuss their solutions.

The Purpose of the Workshop

• The Challenge Mapping exercise highlighted the fact that even though institutions may be responsible for creating many of the social challenges we see today, we, as individuals, need to take accountability and start thinking differently about our place in the system. Anyone and everyone can make a positive social change.
• Even though we live in a system with limitations, the Solutions Prompt exercise encouraged people to think creatively about how to come to a solution that looked beyond those initial constraints.

Feedback from the Participants

1. Participants from the “lack of affordable housing group” felt “discouraged” and “depressed” after listing out all of the obstacles during the Challenge Mapping exercise.
2. When participants were “pushed to come up with solutions,” they felt “encouraged” by innovating and collaborating with their other group members.
3. Two participants had their own startup ideas that they did not consider to be a reality, but after the workshop, they “felt more motivated to launch their dream ideas.”
4. The Solutions Prompt exercise pushed participants to “think differently” about social change. Towards the end of the workshop, this resulted in a “shift in mindset” to combat inaction.

• The Challenge Mapping exercise highlighted the fact that even though institutions may be responsible for creating many of the social challenges we see today, we, as individuals, need to take accountability and start thinking differently about our place in the system. Anyone and everyone can make a positive social change.
• Even though we live in a system with limitations, the Solutions Prompt exercise encouraged people to think creatively about how to come to a solution that looked beyond those initial constraints.

The workshop was eye-opening for both the Impaction team and the participants. After the workshop, we were able to validate our mission that simply asking yourself, “What can YOU do to make a difference?” can truly make waves towards positive social change.

Jai Dhimar participates in the “education inequality” group brainstorming session.

*Please note that this was a workshop exercise and that the obstacles listed during this workshop were based on the prescribed narrative and participants’ own background knowledge. For the purposes of this workshop, the narratives and obstacles are not meant to be fully comprehensive and representative of the whole system.

**Please note that these “solutions” are simply brainstorming activities — they are not necessarily tested and tried ways that will “solve” deeply-rooted social challenges.