Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

The implementation of the "mind map" tool has been the best way to grow my passion for helping  people in their challenge to overcome addiction to psychoactive substances. I work as a volunteer  youth leader in my neighborhood, analyzing problems, and integrating solutions. One of the biggest  challenges was to analyze the causes and consequences of the use of these substances by the youth  community, as well as to study and join efforts among other volunteers such as psychologists,  engineers, sociologists, police specialists, doctors, psychiatrists and people in the community, what  strategies could be implemented to improve the well-being of young people and the wider community  living in the sector.

The neighborhood is recognized for being large and commercial, the large number of inhabitants  belonging to the sector has allowed the development of the same, through the implementation of  recreational areas such as parks, churches, sports centers, small green areas, and the creation of private  businesses of all kinds by its inhabitants, including butchers, restaurants, shops, supermarkets,  drugstores, bakeries, toy stores, hardware stores, among many more; however, the increase in  commercial development and the population growth of its inhabitants has demonstrated the existence  of youth groups consuming psychoactive substances in recreational areas, which has provoked  complaints from the other inhabitants of the sector, as they claim that insecurity has increased since  there have been multiple problems such as thefts to businesses, robberies, quarrels, children cannot  go out to play in the recreational areas without involving some kind of danger, in addition to the bad  odors caused by these substances when they are consumed. Although there is a legally authorized  control establishment in the area, the management of the situation has spiraled out of control, leading  to despair and fear on the part of the entire community.

Application

The intervention of my work team initially consisted of classifying the community into the following  groups: Children, merchants, owners, polices, and finally young consumers. A representative number  of volunteers from each group participated in our project. Initially, we met with each group and  carried out an integration activity, to share among all their problems and manage to establish global  points of view of the problem.

After the completion of the activity, the work team individually allocated a prudent time for each of  the volunteers to make two personal mental maps, the first for identification of causes and the second  with consequences for the problem posed.

With my work team, we were able to determine factors of general causes of the problem, among  them: the lack of control of the supply and demand trade by the legally responsible authorities, the  absence of supervision over the legality of the multiple businesses present, lack of sufficient number  of security members, deficiency of technological devices for monitoring, predisposition to start the  addiction process due to the large number of consumers present, the lack of regulation between the  use of recreational spaces, the existence of mental health problems, domestic abuse and weak  affective ties between the families of young consumers, money scarcity and low quality of life among  the inhabitants, lack of motivation and abandonment of studies, and finally forgetfulness and lack of  intervention by the government to promote employment opportunities.

For each identified factor, a group of professional volunteer personnel, mentioned at the beginning of  the challenge, was established to create solution strategies taking into account the mental maps of the

consequences, that is, the engineers were in charge of solving the technological part to better  monitoring; specialized police officers were in charge of training area personnel in the legal control  of these substances; psychologists and psychiatrists provided individual and group advisory to the  entire community, especially young consumers about their family situation, doctors carried out  detoxification campaigns for the body, ordinary people look for management alternatives for the  government to invest in opportunities of new jobs for young people, in addition to regulating  recreation areas according to their construction objectives.

Insight & Approach

The use of the mind map tool was very useful to provide organization to the project, which was  essential to start possible and applicable solution strategies. Our team of volunteers will shortly make  satisfaction surveys of the project in all the groups of inhabitants of the sector, if there are new  challenges we will face them through this and other tools learned in “Desing thinking”.

Name: Yuly Ceballos

References

Module 3. Design thinking course. University of Virginia (2020).

