Client Profile
Latin American Leadership Academy (LALA) seeks to promote sustainable economic development and strengthen democratic governance in Latin America by developing a new generation of leaders. LALA creates international and socioeconomically diverse cohorts of the most promising graduating high school students who have demonstrated an unshakeable commitment to social change.
LALA is launching leadership boot camps throughout Latin America to create local hubs of social impact and find values-aligned youth. In the near future, LALA hopes to open an eighteen-month program, which blends entrepreneurial leadership, a liberal arts education, and social and emotional learning. The program connects participants to mentors, resources, and opportunities, and LALA envisions a diverse continental ecosystem that collaborates across differences to bring shared prosperity to Latin America.
Definition of Opportunity
As the LALA ecosystem expands, attracting new members to the community (youth participants, social entrepreneurs, facilitators, advisors, etc.), we need creative ways to stay connected, both in local hubs and at a distance, essentially building and sustaining effective networks. More than just “keeping track” of what people are doing, we aim to create a community of mutual support and guidance (i.e. accompaniment). So far, after our one-week boot camps, alumni have used Whatsapp groups to keep in touch about projects they are developing, to celebrate accomplishments, and share resources about college applications, educational opportunities, local politics, etc. However, Whatsapp is visually messy, has a limited audience, and can restrict engagement to a superficial level.
Latin American Leadership Academy wants to enhance its understanding possibilities for strong networks to combat social inequality in the region. We want to develop a network of partnerships with people and institutions that have the strongest commitments to supporting education and social change.
Initial Ideas
LALA would like to know: what are other organizations doing successfully to “keep their communities connected”? Some ideas that were brainstormed: “Humans of LALA” posts, a podcast, a LALA interface with notifications, among others.
Definition of Success
From this exploration of best practices, we would like to launch strategies to nurture, thicken, and enhance the connections in our Latin American ecosystem. Broadly speaking, this team hopes to map successful examples networks building in support social impact initiatives that might serve as models to help improve LALA’s decision-making and better inform our network building aspirations.
Recommendation
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