YWCA - GIRLS CO-DESIGNED SPRING ACTIVITY

Young Women’s Christian Association of Rwanda (YWCA Rwanda) successfully finalized the co-design with girls’ activity. YWCA Rwanda entered into partnership with Spring Accelerator in April 2015 and this partnership began with a girl consultation process which was successful. Following the girl consultations was the Spring Boot Camp that was held in Nairobi in July 2015, where the entrepreneurs developed new business strategies that incorporate girls as a core segment of end users and/or business stakeholders. It was therefore upon that background that Spring and YWCA Rwanda embarked on the co-design process which was initiated during the 7th to the 9th of October 2015.

The main objective of the co-design process was to come up with effective products and business/operational models for girls. Therefore, this called for entrepreneurs to conduct research with the 36 girls to evolve elements of their business prototypes.
Prior to the co-design activity was the training of the social workers, translators and the modulators on the prototyping in context with girls and the girls’ safeguarding. Following the training, was the Co-design research activity which brought together participants from Spring, Haute Baso, Jibu as the entrepreneurs, YWCA staff and the 36 girls who were in different age groups between 12-19, in and out of school girls as well as young mothers.

The research was successfully finalized and all the girls were very much inspired by the co-design activity which ensured that their voices/needs and concerns were heard. Additionally, the entrepreneurs were able to gain valuable insights into the girls’ day to day lives and to benefit from the girls sharing their input on the products and business design process.