Ideation Sessions
One of the central building blocks to this project is that is designed with, not for, the people who will be using it.
This is why we ran 2 separate ideation sessions with both BRC and non-BRC, refugee service managers, women’s group leaders, caseworkers, refugees, subject matter experts. We invited people from Red Cross Training, fundraising and the innovation hub as well.
We wanted held two brainstorming ideation sessions with two different groups, using a tool called FunRetro — which we will discuss later — for participants to get their ideas down and out of their head!
We lived by the principles that no idea is a bad idea, we want quantity not quality and the more outrageous the better!
Design Principles
The only guidelines we gave participants beyond the questions were design principles. Other than this everything was fair game.
We wanted the ideas to be as bold and outrageous as possible.
We asked participants to work within the following service design and business design principles.
Service Design Principles
- Designed with, not for, refugees and asylum seekers
- Promotes independence and growth
- Valuable professional development
- Confidence-building
- A safe space
- Flexible to people’s situations
- Person-centred support
- Easy to access
- Inclusive use of technology
- Provides support in partnerships
- Challenges racist stereotypes of refugees
Business Design Principles
- Aligned with BRC values
- Low start-up costs
- Quick to market
- High margins
- Meets social mission
- Strong customer need
- ‘COVID-19’ secure
Ideas, ideas, ideas.
With the design principles on the zoom and as our only guiding factors, we were ready for ideas.
FunRetro was the tool of choice for these two sessions. It allowed participants to put their ideas down entirely anonymously.
Session 1
For the first session we asked a participants three questions.
We wanted to hear what services people would come up with first so we asked…
How might we support women into volunteering or paid work with…
- £10
- An unlimited budget
- Your most wild and exciting idea
Some of the ideas which came up were focussed around mentoring, career advice days, work placements and work shadowing. There were also ideas around setting up CV and interview drop in sessions and working closely with partners.
One to one personalised support with a careers adviser-mentor, from the moment they arrive in the UK, with excellent contacts in the field of work they want to work in and guaranteed interviews
Volunteer mentors from across industry, who dedicate a set number of hours of time to supporting women matched to them according to interests
The Red Cross, as part of its recruitment, could have a set number of RAS women to be employed each year into both voluntary and paid roles (voluntary for asylum seekers, paid for refugees). If we are asking other orgs to commit to this type of support, then we should be leading the way….
We also wanted to tap into the business brains in the group. We wanted to see what ideas the group could come up with around social enterprises and businesses so we asked…
How might we design a social enterprise that generates an income…
- That launches in a week
- With £200
- That is in line with the seven fundamental principles of the Red Cross
We got some great ideas around what social enterprises we could come up with.
Chocolate factory for refugee women to produce sweets and chocolates with either inscriptions from their countries or moulds of images from their country
Online cooking classes.
Live chat room to discuss why the principles are important during war and persecution. People pay to be part of the live learning.
Set up a restaurant that runs out of a BRC retail shop
Now with both the business and service brains turned on, we wanted to get participants thinking on how we might combine the two. Some of the ideas that participants came up with were:
Recruitment agency of specialist refugees and asylum seekers. Charge feeds to organisations, which then are used to run a mentoring programme.
Create an online store of specialist products. 50% go to BRC 50% go to refugees. The profits go toward running a mentoring programme.
Franchise BRC shops and rent to refugees as franchise owners who can take a salary from the surplus as well as provide income to the BRC for franchise.
Lots of the ideas were around mentoring and personal support, with the business being the profit maker behind the service.
Session 2
With session 2 we wanted to review and prioritise ideas from session 1 and build on the prioritised ideas from session 1. We did this by using FunRetro and getting people to vote on which their favourite combined
The winner was the selling crafts to fund a mentoring programme as well as franchising the BRC shops.
We then asked participants to develop the final ideas using this template.
We got some great ideas where businesses and services can merge.
BRC Funded Scholarship
Wellbeing Centre
Theatre to Thrive
Childcare
Next Steps
After looking at all the ideas and analysing them, we want to not take one specific idea, but rather, lots of aspects from multiple ideas to develop something ready for testing.
For the service, we are looking at developing a mentoring programme. Everyone on the sessions, and from all our user research, has mentioned the importance of mentoring and peer to peer support. We are looking at designing a mentoring programme that helps refugee and asylum seeking women into either internships, volunteering and work placements, in the field of work that they want to work in. To get them that first step on the UK job ladder.
As for the business, we are moving toward testing. At the moment, as far as businesses go, we have coffee carts and puzzle selling as ideas to test. We plan however, to run a specific business ideation session soon and so wat builds out of these sessions may shape future testing.
Thank you
Here we need to pause. To pause to say thank you to all the participants of the ideation session.
This has been an unbelievably useful exercise as we have been able to work with stakeholders to get ideas for the project. We have found it really useful to get fresh eyes and a new perspective on the refugee social enterprise project
Ultimately, this is how we want the project to be designed — with and by, not for, refugees and asylum seekers. We can only do this by including multiple stakeholders in the ideation phase.
This is my last blog as I am leaving the project, but it is in safe hands with Sarah and Alice.
