Dive into rapid prototyping with a feminist leadership lens! Create solutions that address community needs, prioritize inclusivity, and allow for value-driven decision-making.
This activity was made as a part of One Future Collective’s Catalysing Change Toolkit, which includes a variety of facilitation materials, such as activities, reflective exercises, energisers, games, ice-breakers, and more. You can utilise these tools in your communities—be it at your workplace, within your family, or among friends—to bring about meaningful change. Through these resources, you can engage in reflection, foster dialogue, raise awareness, and advocate for important issues.
Remember, change starts with you, today. So let’s dive in!
✨ Why This Matters
In a world that demands quick, impactful solutions to complex problems, rapid response prototyping is a vital skill. This activity emphasizes how to approach prototyping through the lens of feminist leadership, ensuring that solutions are not just fast, but also inclusive, equitable, and responsive to diverse communities. By integrating feminist principles, such as equity, care, and collaboration, you’ll be able to design solutions that prioritize the needs of marginalized groups and promote social justice.
Rapid prototyping, when done thoughtfully, can drive real change in moments of crisis or urgency. This involves creating solutions that are flexible, sustainable, and grounded in core values that center people. This activity equips you with strategies to navigate uncertainty and to make decisions that balance urgency with ethical considerations. As a feminist leader, you’ll learn how to quickly design, test, and refine solutions while remaining committed to feminist values.
Ultimately, this activity helps you build the skills necessary to be a leader who is both responsive and responsible, able to act quickly when needed, but always with a focus on justice, equality, and the well-being of all.This means moving from intention to action, with a deep awareness of how each decision impacts our communities.
🎯 What You’ll Unlock
- Self-identify strategies for rapid response prototyping for various stakeholders through a feminist leadership lens.
🧑🏫 Who Can Facilitate
This resource can be used to facilitate skill building in small groups of any size learning about feminist leadership.
🎭 What You’ll Need
- Pen
- Paper
⏳ Clocking It In
40 minutes
| 🌀 Step-by-Step Facilitation Guide 🌀 |
Step 1: Introduction: Set the Stage (3 minutes) Begin by introducing the concept of rapid response prototyping and why it is important, especially when integrating feminist leadership principles. Explain that prototyping isn’t just about finding a quick solution, but also about creating solutions that are thoughtful, inclusive, and grounded in values that address the needs of diverse communities. Encourage participants to think about how feminist principles, such as equity, inclusivity, and care, can be applied to real-world challenges. Let them know that by the end of the session, they will have created a prototype solution to an urgent problem, designed through a feminist leadership lens. Step 2: Overview of the Prototyping Process (5 minutes) Provide a brief overview of rapid prototyping, explaining that the process involves quickly developing and testing solutions to problems, iteratively until a working and useful prototype is obtained. Emphasize that in this activity, speed doesn’t mean sacrificing quality or inclusivity- solutions should be agile but rooted in feminist values. Share that each group will be given a prompt related to a pressing issue, and they will work together to create a prototype solution. Step 3: Divide into Small Groups (2 minutes) Split participants into 3 breakout groups, making sure each group has a diverse representation of perspectives and experiences. Assign each group a different prompt. You can use the following prompts for the activity: 𖥔 Several children cannot access online education due to a lack of devices and/or internet connection. This situation has been worsened by the pandemic, leaving them out of school for over 6 months. 𖥔 Domestic violence has increased threefold during the pandemic due to abusers being at home more, while survivors/victims cannot leave because of lockdown restrictions and local justice authorities limiting hours. 𖥔 Misinformation about COVID-19, such as claims that those who had chickenpox cannot contract the virus, has led many citizens to step out without masks, putting themselves and others at risk. Let each group know that they’ll be tasked with quickly developing a solution to their assigned prompt, and that the solution must integrate both the rapid prototyping process and feminist leadership principles. Step 4: Work on Solutions (10 minutes) Allow the groups 10 minutes to work on their prototypes. Remind them to apply the steps of the prototyping process, which may include brainstorming ideas, sketching out their solutions, and thinking about the key stakeholders who will be impacted. Participants should identify what feminist leadership principles can guide their solution (e.g., equity, inclusivity, collaboration, care) and ensure their prototype addresses the specific needs of the community or group they’re designing for. Encourage groups to think outside the box and to focus on practicality, scalability, and long-term impact. Step 5: Group Presentations (10 minutes) After the 10-minute prototyping session, invite each group to present their solution to the larger group. Allow 3-5 minutes per group to share the following: 𖥔 What problem they are addressing. 𖥔 How their solution incorporates feminist leadership principles. 𖥔 The stakeholders they identified and how their solution meets the needs of these stakeholders. 𖥔 Any challenges they faced during the prototyping process. Encourage other groups to listen actively and ask questions after each presentation. This fosters a collaborative learning environment where participants can share feedback and offer insights on how to improve each prototype. Step 6: Debrief (5 minutes) After all groups have presented, bring everyone back together for a debrief. Use the following questions to guide the reflection: 𖥔 What made you decide you would prototype as this stakeholder? 𖥔 How did you integrate all steps of the rapid prototyping process into your solutions? 𖥔 How did you integrate feminist leadership principles into your prototype? 𖥔 Were there any challenges you faced or ones that you anticipated? What are they? Step 7: Action Planning & Closing (5 minutes) As the session concludes, ask participants to reflect on how they might use rapid prototyping in their own work or communities. Have them identify one way they could use the tools and principles from this activity to address a real-world challenge. Encourage them to consider how they can incorporate feminist leadership values into problem-solving processes, whether in their professional or personal lives. Let participants know that prototyping doesn’t just apply to large-scale projects; it can be used to test ideas, gather feedback, and refine solutions in small, everyday scenarios. Challenge them to think of one opportunity where they can prototype a solution in their current environment. |
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