The Radical Monarchs is a growing national organization committed to fostering social justice leadership among girls and gender-expansive youth of color. With over 120 alumni as of mid-2024 and 60 graduates anticipated every two years, many former Monarchs expressed a desire to remain connected and deepen their social justice leadership development post-graduation.
It was a critical opportunity for the organization–a chance to keep alumni engaged, create a pipeline for future troop leaders, and cultivate graduates as lifelong leaders of social change. But new programs require funding and staff capacity. The Radical Monarchs needed a program plan that would give them a framework for implementing this idea. And that program plan needed to be informed by the people who would ultimately use it–the Radical Monarchs alumni.
Can we give youth tools to help develop a program from scratch?
The Radical Monarchs’ alumni program would need to support the aspirations of their alumni, as well as meet the organization’s needs and goals. VIVA designed a youth-driven, participatory planning process to develop a blueprint for the Radical Monarchs Alumni Program.
Our human-centered design approach emphasized collaboration and inclusion, centering the Radical Monarchs’ values. In partnership with Radical Monarchs staff, we developed a Design Team composed of alumni and staff that would work together to co-create the blueprint.
We worked with the Design Team to create a journey mapping session with their alumni that explored their experiences since graduating from the Monarch program, and captured their hopes and visions for an alumni-centered program.
Once we had learned from alumni about their lived experiences and perspectives, we facilitated the Design Team through a process to define the program’s vision, structure, core activities, and measurable outcomes. The resulting Alumni Program Blueprint gives the team a clear roadmap for implementation.
As a result of this participatory, human-centered design process, VIVA developed not only the Blueprint, but also a suite of designed materials that can be used to communicate about the vision for the program to key stakeholders, partners, and funders in order to bring it to life.
Through this work, we hope that the Radical Monarchs can realize their vision of fostering lifelong social justice leaders who will make the world a more radical place.