Power of Designathon

I am Ashwini from Involve Learning Solutions, part of the Program Design team along with Samyak and Divanshu. When we were struggling to figure out a way to strengthen our program that is when Divanshu (Founder of Involve) approached Regila, Co-founder of Vidhya Vidhai and it turned out to be perfect timing. She had already decided to do “Designathon” with her team, where we also got an opportunity to be a part of the workshop.

If someone says that program design is very difficult or it is boring, visit Vidhya Vidhai and meet Regi, she will prove you wrong.

Day 1 started with situational analysis(SA) which before the workshop was just about finding out a problem for me. The way she asked us to think about the current situation of any stakeholder and the general worldview to what we desire as an outcome, all these gave me a clear picture of how should situation analysis be framed. It was easy for us to do the same for Involve too. 

Once we identified the challenges, we brainstormed on the idea of ‘change’ and that’s when I came across a wonderful change process, an equation and a curve.

Backhard and Harris change equation – When we create some dissatisfaction for our stakeholders with respect to the stage they are in, give them a vision to where they can go and when we create that first step, the resistance goes down. 

This equation helped us think about how making every stakeholder realize their current situation, about our vision and providing the first step to them is very important.

Day 2: Roger’s curve of change adoption – When we find our early adopters (who are willing to accept our vision) and encourage them, then they will become ambassadors to influence people who are showing resistance to accept new things. Through this curve, we know what kind of stakeholders takes priority and where to put our focus on.

Day by day, we were able to untie the knots that we had after listening to all these. It really gave us an idea of how to change and engage our stakeholders towards our vision.

Day 3: After knowing about outcomes, and the difference between indicators and outputs, it made us realize how do we strengthen our monitoring and evaluation in the program.

From these three days, a lot of things got clear, we just have to put in more effort to practice and make it effective. Most Importantly, we as a team are now aligned on the program design terms and have a path to travel in the right direction towards improving our program and making it scalable. 

It was definitely a different experience for all three of us to learn program design along with another team which gave us a new perspective and more understanding towards what we were doing. 

When I saw that Vidhya Vidhai’s team members are more interested to work in program design than operations, I could see how much she has inspired them. She has Inspired us too, Thank you Regi for doing that, I hope we inspire our team too.