In the spirit of collaboration, ICAAD held its first ever board and advisor retreat Jan 22-24th to plan next steps and take account of successes, shortcomings, lessons learned, and progress made in our mission. From design-thinking workshops, analysis of projects and metrics, planning interventions, and development discussions to eating great home-cooked meals, a self-defense workshop, lots of laughs, and enjoying the snowfall by a fire, the retreat was a resounding success.
Despite the blizzard conditions, a good portion of the board and advisory attended in person, with others joining via video conference.
Most importantly, ICAAD team-members formulated new strategies around communication and collaboration, our theory of change, and efforts to sustainably strengthen the capacities of the organizations and communities we serve. A sample of collaborative ideation exercises conducted over the weekend included:
- Understanding the Project Design Process: Define Problem → Identify Beneficiaries, Partners, and Stakeholders → Ideate → Prototype → Test
- Personas: Understanding beneficiaries, stakeholders, audience, and skills and talents available for projects
- Story Boards: Using personas and building the project workflow to better understand resources required and gaps
- Systems Mapping: Thinking through the relationships between the problem we are trying to solve, the partners and stakeholders we must engage to meet the project objective
- Theory of Change Diagram: Connecting each project to the overarching mission of the organization through concrete objectives and measurable goals.
ICAAD Team Members Working on Systems Mapping of Projects
Systems Mapping a Human Rights Initiative
Are you interested in joining the ICAAD team? Do you feel like you have important skills or resources to offer in support of our mission? We are actively looking for talented, dedicated volunteers to join our team. Contact us at info(at)icaadglobal .org for more information.
