C A S E S T U D Y S O C I A L S E C T O R
Impact North Shore
Co-design Workshop for Immigrant and Refugee Services
Impact North Shore had undergone a rebrand in 2021 and established a new Community Innovation department. The Director engaged Impact Plus to facilitate a remote co-design workshop/training with the goal of bringing together cross-functional teams from Marketing and Communications, Operations, and Services/program areas. The purpose was to learn how to co-create together by placing the strengths and needs of immigrants and refugees at the center of program planning, delivery, and partnerships.
The desired training outcomes were to:
Get to know one another better across functional teams.
Build a shared understanding of what co-design is and examples of co-design in practice.
Apply co-design principles and tools to real projects that the team was working on.
Brainstorm and test ideas to embed co-design when working together with communities, nonprofit, and government partners.
O U R A P P R O A C H
Getting hands-on with co-design
Impact Plus facilitated a 3-hour remote co-creation workshop using a mix of real case studies, scenario-based practice, and interactive group brainstorms. To make co-design come alive, we grouped participants into mini-design teams to work on three real-world projects they were involved in.
The mini co-design project teams were the: Canadian Work Experience project, North Shore First Peoples Resource Guide team, and North Shore Immigrant Inclusion Partnership team at Impact North Shore.
We facilitated hands-on practice with co-design tools, including empathy mapping and the Iceberg tool, which helps to understand the individual, cultural, and environmental factors that shape the experiences of immigrants and refugees in Canada.
R E S U L T
Working better together to deliver immigrant and refugee services
During the workshop, participants had a number of aha moments, including learning when (and when not) to use co-design, discovering creative methods for involving immigrants and refugees early on in the design process for services and programs, and testing assumptions about what is required for successful settlement and thriving in Canada.
The session sparked new ideas for working across teams without duplicating existing resources or reinventing the wheel in order to address issues impacting the immigrant and refugee experience.
Through problem-solving together, the team got to know each other better, which contributed to a stronger culture of innovation, cross-team collaboration, and learning.
“Thank you for the wonderful session! It was informative and thought-provoking. Precious and Sohailia also created a welcoming environment for real learning and sharing.
I also really appreciated that a co-design approach was used by Impact Plus leading up to the session to ensure that it was relevant for our specific goals.”
Lorelei Philips
Director of Community Innovation
Impact North Shore