2019 Program Overview
The objective of Reimagine Lab 2019 was to give fellows opportunities to further explore the concepts they created in 2018 through prototyping. At the conclusion of Reimagine Lab in 2018, there was no expectation that the lab would continue. Fellows were eager to continue what they had come up with and were hopeful the ideas would find a way to move forward through their own work or through the Foundation’s new strategic direction. When the Foundation announced that Reimagine Lab would continue in March 2019, the fellows were not only grateful to advance their concepts, but also to continue to work within the budding network of fellows.
Thirteen out of 16 original fellows from 2018 joined Reimagine Lab 2019 initially, and 12 fellows stayed until the end of the program on Demo Day. In addition to fellows, teams were encouraged to involve more co-working partners/Catalysts, who provided the perspectives of users or expertises that teams themselves did not have. During the six months, fellows spent a significant amount of time on the program, with a weekly average of 9.2 hours, testing at least 3 rounds of prototypes on average with 75 users engaged per team.
Resources:
- Kickoff 2019 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COz16izMpj4
- Demo Day Video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/flghct0clluvfjt/Reimagine-Lab-Demo_Nov6_2019.mp4?dl=0
- Final Report: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QxtSusPR2v2eecEmF-YFiGZGz2VJAmAfweC1f2FrrMI/edit#
State of the Projects
At the end of six-months of prototyping, Reimagine Lab fellows prototyped and iterated on their ideas from the end of 2018 to present five project concepts at Demo Day in November 2019. The following are those project ideas:
Anti-Violence Ventures: Black Men & Boys Take a Lead (AVV) is an innovative anti-violence social intervention model. The project includes potential investment in Black male entrepreneurs and Black male-led organizations and agencies to support embedding an aspect of partner, family, and community violence prevention into their general business, activities, or programming.
Team Members (alphabetical order by first name): Rain McNeill, Sonya Young Aadam
Entrepreneurs Ending DV (EEDV) invests in entrepreneurs ending domestic violence. In exchange for a financial contribution, interested entrepreneurs partner with EEDV to overlay domestic violence awareness and prevention into their previously established business models. EEDV is open to working with all entrepreneurs. However, it targets entrepreneurs who self-identify as people of color or whose target audience primarily serves people of color.
Team Members (alphabetical order by first name): Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D
Got Your Back (GYB) is a mobile app that can interface with other social media and communication apps in a secure manner. GYB will be able to detect “red flag” words or language and alert the user to the language. Why would youth want to use this? Well, the GYB would be designed by them, so it could look, act, talk and respond in a way that feels most comfortable. Many youth do not have the experience or role-models for healthy relationships, so we see this as providing them an opportunity to stop and think about situations that could be unhealthy and potentially lead to abusive relationships. This could include friendships, bullying, and dating relationships, among others. GYB can serve as primary prevention to detect unhealthy language and to provide youth the opportunity to stop it there before it escalates into anything more harmful. GYB can end the cycle of violence.
Team Members (alphabetical order by first name): Evelyn Magaña, Frances Ho, Navya Kaur, Trisha Baird
History Reimagined is a youth-empowerment project developed by domestic violence and youth incarceration prevention advocates from across the state of California. By creating opportunities for youth to review, research, reclaim, and recite their family and community stories and history, youth will build confidence in how they navigate the world, as well as resilience to violence and traumatic events. History Reimagined hopes to break the cycle of domestic violence and youth incarceration by building bridges between change-makers of our past to the leaders of the future.
Team Members (alphabetical order by first name): Addison Rose Vincent, Ana Rosa Najera, Devika Shankar
Influencers 4 Justice partners with and invests in non-traditional community partners (e.g. coaches, artists, faith leaders, activists/organizers) who are able to influence social and behavioral norm change within their community. Through investing, resources partners will agree to work together with advocates and develop domestic violence prevention campaigns appropriate to their organizations and/or communities.
Team Members (alphabetical order by first name): Jorge L. Fernandez; Sharon Turner; Sandra Henriquez