This September, the Cooperative Impact Emerging Leaders virtual program supports lifelong learners to build projects that serve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Apply Now for the Fall 2020 cohort.

Project

Differentiate yourself by creating a case study of your venture that makes an impact. Immerse yourself in an underserved population to gain a deeper understanding of their needs in order to instruct the design and implementation of a program or solution that you deliver to the population, and perhaps scale to larger communities through a strategic partnership that you develop.

Core competencies:

• Creativity
• Empathy
• Communication
• Emotional Intelligence
• Relationship Building
• Active Listening
• Resilience
• Adaptability
• Service Design
• Remote Learning
• Innovation
• Community Service
• Entrepreneurship
• Problem Solving
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Building
• Working Virtually
• Collaboration
• Compassionate Leadership

Description

This program is planned as virtual and will consist of a cohort of participants working in collaboration within the larger Cooperative Impact network. The time commitment is approximately 100-200 hours over the course of the fall beginning September 1st and ending December 1st.

This 60-day journey begins Monday, August 24th and is for compassionate innovators to learn and apply new skills by exploring their stakeholder community to uncover shared needs instructing the design of a new venture (program, event, video, product, service) to launch, test, and validate.

The program experience contains a series of workshops, microlessons, activities, and resources for participants to learn new skills and apply them in real-work scenarios. There will be regularly scheduled peer support gatherings, check-ins with Cooperative Impact leadership, and the opportunity to connect with our mentor community. We provide journal prompts that encourage learners to document their process, lessons learned, and any insights they discover about themselves and their work.

Throughout the program, Cooperative Impact will offer verified certifications for specific skills and competencies for a fee.

Apply Now for the Fall 2020 cohort.

Who is it for?

This program is for lifelong learners pursuing work in management consulting, social services, social justice, criminal justice, community and economic development, organizational management, social entrepreneurship, social innovation, venture philanthropy, and public policy.

Apply Now for the Fall 2020 cohort.

Curriculum

Below are the core elements of the experience and the capabilities a learner may expect to obtain from successfully completing the program. The content and structure listed below is subject change. The syllabus for the fall 2020 program will be published as we near the start of the program.

0. Who are you?

To lead others, start by leading yourself. Build a deeper relationship with yourself. Know who you are, know what lights you up, know where you’d like to go, who you want to be, and know how to bring yourself there.

I. What problem would you like to solve?

Review the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to select a general problem(s) that gives you direction towards a population to serve ie: Goal #2: Zero Hunger.

• You will learn to: align your passion with the type of work you’d like to do, have conversations with peers on the pros and cons of collaboration, and discover potential interest in building a team that works together to solve the same problem

II. Who faces the problem?

Find access to the people you would like to serve (ie community groups, online communities, churches, nonprofits, schools, personal connections, research, attend events / locations where the population can be found, build meaningful relationships with each person, and document your notes from each encounter).

• You will learn to: develop relationships through empathetic, compassionate conversations; create a container for an individual to feel safe being vulnerable; manage relationships through the documentation of one-on-one interactions for on-going analysis, theme detection, and insight discovery

Conduct 10-20 one-on-one interviews from the population you aim to serve.

• You will learn to: plan and conduct in-depth / impromptu stakeholder interviews, craft questions, and compile data to identify common threads in unmet needs

Research the ecosystem of services and support currently available for the specific population suffering from the specific problem

• You will learn to: perform competitive research, map an ecosystem of services and support that currently wrap-around a specific underserved population, and identify gaps in support as opportunities for you to enter with your solution

Based on what you learn, refine the problem you want to solve into something more specific and framed as a “how might we…” question ie: how might we empower single, minority, low-income mother’s to cook healthy on food stamps?

• You will learn to: frame the problem in a way that empowers you to design a meaningful solution alongside stakeholders

III. What solution will you co-create to serve the population?

Prototype a new service solution closely with stakeholders, and be prepared to continuously improve based on feedback, results, and research.

• You will learn to: collaboratively design a product or service as a solution that brings relief to a specific unmet need, assess the impact of your solution, actively collect feedback from stakeholders, and use your own observations to measure effectiveness in order to continuously improve the solution

IV. How will you make your service accessible to more people?

Turn your solution into a digital service, online course, niche website, video series, blog post, tool kit, or various other options in order to amplify your impact.

• You will learn to: standardize your service into an easy to share product that is capable of reaching more people, and identify potential partnerships with relevant organizations who can help you reach the population you aim to serve

Next Steps

• Start Date: January 15th
• Candidates Accepted: January 10th
• Applications Due: August January 7th
• Length: 8 weeks
• Age: You must be at least 18 years old to apply

Apply Now for the cohort.

Questions? Please ask your question in the comment section below.