When I met Garrett Mason in 2015 his words, “This could change the world," felt too good to be true. But Garrett has been in many positions to help that happen. I’ll share a couple.
The first is in his work, presently as Chief Training Officer, with CorpsAfrica, which has grown across the continent from Senegal to Ethiopia and Morocco to Malawi to train local volunteers working with their communities on challenges ranging from improving water access and sanitation to developing community centers and schools.
Garrett and CorpsAfrica have brought Innovators’ Compass with them, translating it into 18 African languages. According to volunteer Emas Potolani in Malawi, it helps volunteers “Know much better the problems [people] are facing and how we can, together with the community, devise and get the solutions.”
Samuel Kibebe, another CorpsAfrica volunteer, shared this remarkable, detailed case study about a community in Kenya who used the Compass and a lot of creativity on a cascade of challenges in establishing kitchen gardens to make fresh food accessible to families.
But the volunteers aren’t just using it with their communities; they’re increasingly using it for themselves. Garrett led a Compass-based dialogue to codesign their daily reflection practice during training, then overheard volunteers Compassing their design of an after-training sports event: “What are the principles we need to keep in mind as we’re planning this? Is it about having fun, to be connected, for our health?”
As Abderrahmane Boujenab, CorpsAfrica's Regional Training Manager for North and West Africa, shared, the language has come into strategic decisions. For example, to decide which site was next for expanding the training program, they discussed “What do we have and not have in each site? What matters most about this expansion?" They also Compassed what should be on the curriculum for the returning and new training officers and volunteer liaisons. "I believe we would not have been able to do this—or at least would take more time and be more challenging—without the Compass. The other big thing that has helped us is the emphasis the Compass has brought to putting people at the heart of development."
I'll share just one other way Garrett has created global impact. These short videos from alumni of the YES US State Department program show the Compasses they created during the height of the COVID pandemic when Garrett taught them human-centered design and community-led development. One young woman in Kosovo worked in her community to understand why conversations about mental health weren’t happening and launched one experiment at a time to tackle the taboos she discovered. Another, in Lebanon, engaged fellow youth to find creative, COVID-friendly ways to restart their activities and hangouts. And in Indonesia, yet another tackled families’ technical barriers to attending virtual school.
I'm endlessly grateful to Garrett for all of this, as well as all the stories, observations, and ideas that he and everyone he's touched have shared back.
|