Title of LiA project

Indigenous Communities and Empowerment of Minority Groups

The organisation/charity

MakeSense & Killa Natural Ancestral

Organisation/charity contact

Full name: Paula Bernasconi

Email address: paula.bernasconi@maksense.org

The need or cause being supported

🎯 Challenge: How can we improve social media content to promote sales of our new eco-friendly home products, including eco-friendly ink and printing?

Objectives

Promote home-deco eco-friendly products through social media advertisement campaign to reach wider audience for Killa Natural Ancestral, ranging from middle-high income women to international customers. 

Stakeholders

1. Local women in Lima: Empower women with better job opportunities in the capital. The employment ensures from Killa not only these women a stable income, but also higher flexibility in work. For instance, work from home and flexible working hour enable mothers to take care of their children while supporting their families.
2. Village communities in Amazon: 10% of Killa’s profit contributes to improving the quality of life in the Yamac village in central Peru. The fund will be allocated to mainly infrastructure and working tools, like drills for making beads in accessories. 
3. Children and adolescent in the jungle: Killa is also dedicated to education and prevention of child trafficking. The higher education level also helps them to get rid of property by getting higher paid job.

Experience

It enabled me to immerse in a very different culture, the Latin American culture, by working with a local organisation. The visitations of local artisans and interactions with volunteers helped me better understand the situation and needs of Killa better. This not only widened my eyesight, but also helped my team to create more appropriate ideas for our project. If we visit Peru by ourselves, it is impossible for us to delve into the locals living in this perspective. This programme offered us the chance to step into the shoes of a local organisation and try to ideate solutions for them by combining our own culture and knowledge.

Leadership Learnings

Week 1: Start with Understanding

There are three major takeaways. My self-understanding was improved by the guided reflections, assisting me to better adapt into the new environment. In addition, the importance of empathy was highlighted. I did not realise how I had many assumptions regarding Peru and my organisation before the sessions. Lastly, I had a better understanding of how to clear up the assumptions by asking questions, researching, and information gathering.

Week 2: Inspiration and Design Thinking

The significance of focusing in our idea was brought to our attention. While we should brainstorm as wide, and as big as possible, we should bear in mind the limitations of the reality. The two guidelines helped us to think about as much possibilities as we can, and making them feasible in real life.

Week 3: Ideation and Prototype

In order to implement the ideas in real life, logistics and details have to be considered and planned ahead. One of the most important first steps is to confirm the availability of the major stakeholders of the solution. In addition, it is also crucial to communicate your ideas with the stakeholders to ensure the solutions can address their needs.

Week 4: Flexibility and Assertiveness 

After chatting with the organisations, some of our plans needed to be changed accordingly to better suit the solution. We tried our best to compromise. On the same time, we need to be know our limit and goals. It is important to value ourselves in a collaborating project as well.

Week 5: Problem solving and Prioritizing

This intense week taught me much more about event management. As one of the person-in-charge, I have to coordinate many things at the same time. The ability of communicating your needs to volunteer and assigning manpower in different tasks are the key. I am glad to observe and learn these skills from other scholars working on similar roles. It is also very important to hide your anxiety and maintain a confidence image in order to lead the team.

Week 6: Closing and Reflecting

I learned much more about design thinking, not only in words, but also in action. Our mentors were able to guide us using the six steps of design thinking. With their support, the skills can be applied to real life easier. It helped us to imagine what may happen in the project and create more detailed plans.

However, I am not sure if they are useful in my future because I have little confidence in executing design thinking by myself without guidance.

Impact

We conducted a mini-scale research on Peruvian consumer habits and attended seven workshops with artisans. We interviewed three artisans, joined four meetings with the co-founder, hosted virtual sessions with volunteers, and invited influencers to promote the brand. Additionally, we translated a catalogue, created reels, wrote blogs, co-organized an art market, assisted in a photoshoot, and made two PowerPoint proposals.

Sense of achievement comes from the connections I built with volunteers. It can be demonstrated through the activities we joined together and the memories we created. I am very glad that most of them show interest in the topic we worked on. They put in time and effort in this project to make the impact together.