Background
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched its Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge in 2019 “to elevate diverse voices that can help broaden the conversation about the issues inhibiting economic mobility and generate deeper awareness and actionable understanding.”
Challenge
The Voices for Economic Opportunity Incubator, a Purpose lab, was tasked with supporting a diverse set of organizations, changemakers, and storytellers to more effectively shift harmful narratives on poverty and economic mobility in the US.
The incubator we built provided resources to grantees to foster community & collaboration, training & learning, and testing & experimentation to support the development of creative ideas that began to shift harmful narratives on poverty in the US.
To create a sense of pride and community through the incubator’s brand, we built a visual identity that uses vibrant colors and organic shapes. The shapes create a V to represent the many voices heard throughout the initiative, and the imperfect nature of the shapes demonstrates the value of co-collaboration and experimentation in pursuit of storytelling.
The Brand
I helped design the program by contributing to the curriculum and materials used in learning and training sessions throughout the incubator, and I was a creative coach guiding participants through the development of their campaigns.
Creative Toolkit
Our team created over 60 materials during the incubator. I led the development of a creative toolkit to provide participants with the information and resources they need to take full control of their project’s creative development and production from start to finish.
We helped guide participant organizations through the production of documentaries, digital campaigns, websites, podcasts and more, demonstrating the importance of multi-pronged approaches for delivering narrative change.
Our Impact
79% of participants reported valuable skills learned from the Incubator
68% of participants made strategic project improvements
68% of participants had effective projects overall
Website
As a culmination of more than a year of work during the incubator, I led the development of a website to share incubator materials and create an evergreen resource for those looking to use narrative change strategies in their comms work.
Promotional Campaign
We developed a short, comprehensive document for narrative change practitioners.
Project Team:
My role
Creative Lead
Senior Leadership Team
Copywriter
Creative Coach
Curriculum building
Collaborators
Project team listed above
Animation: Kai Hovland
Web Dev: Matt Lima
UX: Tracy Gabrys
Copywriting support: Amary Wiggin