|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Based in Waterloo, Adventure4Change (A4C) is a non-profit organization with one goal – to prevent poverty and negative life trajectories by inspiring self-discovery using the A4C model to enable communities to make meaningful contributions to society. The organization offers year-round programming for children, youth, parents, and families who live in vulnerable and low-income neighbourhoods in Waterloo, several of whom are from newcomer backgrounds.
“These families often find it difficult to access meaningful, affordable, and nearby after-school activities. A4C, therefore, addresses these inequities by administering relevant programming throughout the year, related but not limited to education, physical activity, and learning new skills,” says Elysia Bednarek, Program Director at A4C.
Adventure4Change is one of the organizations that is part of Capacity Canada’s Human-Centred Design Thinking Program – Capacity by Design.
“The five-week training sessions, during which we learned and implemented the teachings in practice sessions, were very insightful and thorough,” reflects Elysia. Liz and Hugh gave us all the tools and guidance necessary to successfully begin running our design-thinking process at A4C, and we are excited to see where this process takes us.”
The Program and Youth Team at Adventure4Change hopes to use the teachings learned through the Design Thinking process to better understand their programs and thus update and create new programs based on this process. “Our organization has significantly changed throughout the past few years in terms of both demographics and the number of participants in our programs. We, therefore, want to review and potentially revise our programs to ensure that we meet the community’s current needs. We are beginning this journey of the Desing Thinking program by re-evaluating one of our youth programs called Connect, and then we will move on to all other new and existing programs,” adds Elysia.
Aiming to change the world by inspiring people to live lives of self-worth, respect, opportunity, and contribution, Capacity Canada cannot wait to see A4C’s future journey.
Learn more about Capacity By Design here.
