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Mindfulness Meets Impact

Mindful Design Lab

When mindfulness is applied to social innovation, it transforms the way we understand and advance change. Conscious social change uses contemplative practice to understand change from the inside out, then applies mindfulness as a design tool in developing a social change solution. This experiential course (hosted over 6-day intensives or weekly up to 12 months), provides change leaders with the skills to invest in their own self-understanding and initiate social change mindfully, sustainably and with impact at home or abroad.

SPOTLIGHT: Mindful Design Lab: Disability Justice. In collaboration with the ENDependence Center of Northern Virginia and funded by the Ford Foundation, this 8-month incubator for selected Agents of Change is catalyzing new social ventures designed by and for people with disabilities.

Contact us if you would like to co-design a Mindful Design Lab for your organization or community.

MINDFUL DESIGN LAB


PROGRAM CONTENT

The Mindful Design Lab core curriculum is an experiential program involving a blend of personal reflection, mindfulness-based leadership skills, and social entrepreneurship skills. This program is for individuals who are seeking to make a difference in the world, but who are also committed to their own personal growth and wellbeing. 

The course incorporates three components:

  1. Contemplative and Personal Growth Practices: Research is demonstrating that mindfulness practices can change the structure and functioning of our brain over time, which in turn impacts the way we understand others and solve problems. This course incorporates daily contemplative practices to harness wisdom and dissolve barriers, including: meditation, breathwork, qigong, yoga and other forms of reflective practice and movement. 

  2. Mindfulness Based Leadership Skills: Mindfulness practices are particularly relevant to the ways that leaders engage with others and solve problems in their organizations and broader society. This program applies mindfulness with the purpose of developing leadership capacity.

  3. Conscious Social Change Design Tools: When leaders invest in self-awareness and integrate the tools of mindfulness into their relationships, they crack open deeper potential for innovation and longer-term sustainability. The core of the experience involves learning a series of frameworks that use mindfulness as a design tool to begin to craft social issue solutions. At the completion of the course, participants will have a draft of the major components forming a social venture plan and will have the tools to launch their non-profit, campaign or project.


PROGRAM PHASES

A typical program involves three in-person gatherings and weekly coaching sessions with a social entrepreneur and mindful venture design expert.  Each week, participants will be expected to engage in various personal growth or self-awareness practices and share insights from their experiences with their cohort. Teams schedule private coaching sessions based on their pace of idea development, enabling certain teams to move through the venture planning exercises as quickly as they wish, while allowing others to have additional time as needed for venture development.

Phase 1 involves the skills needed for understanding the human dimensions of systemic transformation from one’s personal experience and for using mindfulness as a design tool in developing a comprehensive solution in concept.  The outcome includes a holistic venture solution including mission, vision, theory of change, program model, goals, impact measures, stakeholder engagement strategy, and an in-depth diagnostic of the root and systemic level of the chosen social issue.

Phase 2 includes a process of intentional community listening sessions and the integration of stakeholder insight into the solutions design. It also includes a deep dive into wellbeing and self-care, conscious communications, and participatory engagement strategies.

Phase 3 involves the operational planning process including the design of12-month implementation plans, start up and operational budgets, creative resourcing strategies, conscious organizational design, and integration of inner leadership strategies. At the completion of Phase 3, participants will have developed a comprehensive venture plan for their first 12 months of operations, a pitch deck, and everything they need to apply for funding with a typical grant funding organization.

The total commitment to the program involves 3-4 hours weekly for a total estimated 100 hours. Teams may drive the pace of their work throughout each phase.

Contact us if you would like to co-design a Mindful Design Lab for your organization or community.