The HLCE toolkit lays a solid people-first foundation for our Integrated Social Innovation Toolkit. By connecting and melding various established social innovation frameworks, we believe we have developed a holistic approach to designing for social and environmental challenges.

Cultivate creative confidence, encourage entrepreneurial dare, empathise with your stakeholders, learn to identify assets, and work together for sustainable solutions! Curate your own personalised programme from our suite of offerings, or opt for the whole package for a comprehensive training in entrepreneurial approaches to social impact. See samples of the canvases we use during our workshops here.

Design Thinking For Social Impact*

1. PRIMER: 3 hours introductory overview of DT

2. FULL COURSE: 11 hours; recommended for a more thorough experience of DT that weaves in other social innovation tools

3. TRAIN THE TRAINERS: 12 hours - intensive training for educators or leaders who wish to adapt our curriculum for a specific event, project or camp. Inquire to find out more.

Design Thinking (DT) guides participants to focus on the end-user first and foremost. Through an iterative process of empathizing, defining the challenge space, ideating, prototyping and testing, we arrive at a potential solution that works, based on and for the user. Not the designer.

At Skillseed, we have adapted the DT methodology specifically for social impact and environmental challenges.

design thinking+

3 hours - Lecture and hands-on team activity

Do you have some prior knowledge of DT and want to dive deeper into understanding how you are creating value for your end-users?

In this module, we introduce the Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) to help us achieve the fit between the value of our product / service design to the requirements, pains and gains of our end-users. After completing the canvas, we next explore ways to turn our ideas into value proposition pretotypes and prototypes. This iterative process in Design Thinking+ will require us to design, experiment and test with our end-users as we progressively work towards a viable value-fit solution.

community canvas

2.5 - 3 hours - team and individual activity

A community canvas serves as a platform for stakeholders to co-create the essential elements that will influence the community experience (community identity, community vision, purpose, interaction norms and more). The act of co-creation shares power and builds agency, thus acting as an example for how participants could approach the communities they seek to serve or be a part of. The Community Canvas rests upon the other social innovation modules and lays a firm foundation for starting engaged and bonded communities of any scale.

Participants will engage in a hands-on activity to co-create a Canvas for a new / existing community.

Theory of Change

3 hours - Lecture and team activity

The Theory of Change is a systems-perspective framework that illustrates a multitude of possible pathways towards a long-term positive outcome.

Through the mapping of interventions, short and medium term outcomes, as well as implicit / explicit assumptions associated with those outcomes, one gains a holistic view of the conditions required for the end vision to be achieved. It also includes potential choke points and high leverage areas that should be explored. In short, it captures the big picture; the strategic view.

Logic Model*

3 hours - Lecture and team/individual activity

The Logic Model is a systematic, yet simple and visual way to map and measure the outcomes and impact of our projects. It’s particularly useful when we work in teams and some form of organization or reporting is expected.

Participants will be primed to consider applying the Logic Model to their envisioned project (if ready), allowing them to conceive their intended impact or outcomes from the start and work backwards to plan the resources and activities that they need for a successful project. When communicated visually, the Logic Model also serves well as a reporting tool.

Social Business Model Canvas (SBMC)*

3.5 hours - Hands-on team or individual activity

The SBMC adapts the traditional business plan for businesses and projects with a social mission, while allowing project / business designers to remain nimble and attentive to end users. It helps us succinctly articulate the vital facets of a project’s key ideas, financial sustainability and its social value proposition in a connected manner on a one page canvas.

In our workshops, participants will work in teams to cover the external facing aspects of their envisioned project / solution, considering elements such as the problem they are trying to solve, the unique value proposition of their proposed solution, the key stakeholders and more.

Participants will further flesh out their ideas by cogitating the internal considerations, including sustainable financing and long-term social impact. At Skillseed, we often layer the SBMC with the Logic Model.

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)*

3 hours - Lecture and hands-on team activity

ABCD is a model and practical approach for community development work that recognises, emphasises and leverages the various assets, both tangible and intangible that exist in a given community. As a way of seeing, it also sets the paradigm by which we approach the exploration and solutioning of challenges.

In our ABCD module, we expose participants to the various categories of assets. We emphasise and facilitate participants’ practice of asset-mapping from the scales of the individual, to the community and environment through an engaging applied exercise in the local community (Yes, we will learn beyond the classroom!)

We also explore cases of how ABCD has been realised, in the local context to provide concrete examples of how the gifts of various communities can be activated. Participants will understand how this asset/ strengths-based perspective has the potential to empower our communities, helping to create dignity-promoting, sustainable change.

We strongly recommend that organisations experience the ABCD and DT modules together for greater effectiveness.

Stakeholder ENGAGEMENT

3-3.5 hours - Lecture and hands-on team activity

No man is an island - we all need to work with a diversity of stakeholders to achieve the goals of our initiatives. Stakeholder engagement first begins with mapping to help us identify the key stakeholders that may directly or indirectly influence any change initiative. 

In this module, participants will learn about the different categories of stakeholders and the importance of mapping them out during the course of a project. They will also be able to identify, understand and work with the perspectives of various stakeholders. 

Through the dissection of successful cases, participants will understand how to design effective engagement strategies with various stakeholders, so as to achieve the most ideal and mutually beneficial outcomes for their change initiatives.