From the Ground Up
Building Roots
In the past our client has contacted community education administation to organize their programming, putting out the word through community ed. publications. As a former educator myself, I immediately noticed an under-utilized resource and relationship with schools themselves. Taking a page out of grassroots organizing efforts, I recommended our client skipping past admin/org to org talks and going right to the roots of the education community: teachers, students, families. Building these person-to-person relationships with educators is essential for both long-term and short-term success. There is no telling how far these relationships with teachers can go, they are invaluable. They can go so far as to mean free event space at the school, the teacher participating at the event, promoting it to their students, establishing lasting clubs in schools, all the way to Abamath's ultimate goal of "planned coalescence" into the public education system.
Teachers have meaningful, trustworthy relationships to families, the students and the communities they are teaching in and almost no one's recommendation will go further for your educational programming. Getting in the door with a teacher isn't an option for a lot of businesses. Not many teachers are looking to sell things to their students. Our client is a teacher them self at a post-secondary coding school. With our client's unique offerings and positions, these relationships with teachers have a real chance to flourish into something deeply impactful for Abamath, the teachers and the communities they serve.
Designing Inclusion
Our client's mission is clearly stated to provide inclusive, accessible programming for kids. I strategized a plan that confronted systemic, societal barriers. The first barrier we targeted was payment/registration. We role-played times we've stalled payment for an event and began building systems that confronted the pain-points. For example, the concern of "what if..." events that can make your $150 spent on this coding camp a total waste. Or worse, you don't have $150 to spend on this event but you'd love to send your child. Money is a real barrier and turning people away due to lack of funds is contrary to our client's mission. Active-inclusion practices: representation of teachers, representation on landing page, direct stances on inclusion. Accessibility: pay as able model, transportation, disability accessibility.
