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Mind Mapping

Challenge

We were running a Youth Group Organization called LATAM (La Republica) in a refugee camp to empower youth, build their capacities for them to discover their potential. During our operation, our challenge was that, we couldn't get relevant information about what exactly the young people want to do that will help them. The youth were traumatized by their past experiences (some loss their parents, relatives, friends etc) in the war. When we ask questions to get their mind, no one participated in answering question. So, it became hard for us to get information on what could be done to youth (and we couldn't do anything different unless what youth want). We did some counseling and sensitization meetings for youth and local leaders.

Selection

Mind mapping is a great tool that I used at all times to easily collect hidden data from different people. So our team chose mind mapping tool. Providing sticky note to participants and ask a question, then each of them write as many answers as he/she can. This helps us gather more information about things on ground and what they think should be done.

Application

For our first Mind Mapping, we managed to collect more information from different people for our project of youth 4 change. Our team completed a survey with some few youth and local leaders. The surveys included questions about life standards, youth's needs, understanding to their roles and feelings about the change, that was within a two-week timeframe.I also explained how addressing the needs of one person can impact everyone for the better. Our organization selected 30 youth for three-day training on peace building and conflict resolution. In every after session, we ask two-three questions. We provide them with sticky notes for writing their answers. Through the process, we collected different informations that we could not get if we use other means e.g throwing question to audience. So Mind mapping became the first tool of data collection through our project implementation.

Insight

Our team identified the major issues and concerns about young people by applying Mind mapping tool. More information we needed for our project were collected through this approach, and both our team and the youth would were fairly open to the new prioritization of tasks and process. while our team was open to the prioritization of tasks and process, the young people and the local leaders expressed some concerns. Our team will review this insight and incorporate it into future project designs. This worked really well.

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Approach

Since our team has already gone through several design thinking tools and are at this stage in the timeline, the mind mapping is the appropriate tool. As previously mentioned, our team needs to review the insight gained from our first trainings and sensitization meetings and incorporate this insight into future projects. Future project should reflect insight gained, progress made, and come closer to a compelling solution ready for full rollout.

