How to Center Communities in Social Change with Vichi Jagannathan

Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell

Have you heard of human-centered design? It is built on the idea that people who experience a challenge are best suited to solve it. More recently, human-centered design has been adapted to solve problems that have nothing to do with technology. For example, school districts often use variations of the approach to redesign schools, engaging students, parents, and teachers as the “expert users” who know what’s needed for an optimal learning environment. Social entrepreneurs use it to design ways to alleviate poverty.

My guest today is Vichi Jagannathan, Co-founder & Executive Director of the Rural Opportunity Institute. Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI), one of eight organizations in New Profit’s first Health Equity Cohort, supports youth, organizations, and communities in rural North Carolina to help them interrupt the cycle of generational trauma and design innovative solutions for healing and resilience. ROI builds new tools and is open-source, freely sharing what works. ROI works to turn wisdom and the newest science into common practice.

In this episode, Vichi shares the path that led her to start the organization and how, when properly resourced, a rural community can become a hotbed of innovative practice.

We discuss:

• How to apply Design Thinking and Systems Thinking in rural communities
• How to center equity and inclusion in organizational leadership
• How to center communities in social change

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About Vichi Jagannathan: Entrepreneur, strategist and social change leader who applies innovative ideas in unlikely settings to catalyze impact and community transformation. Vichi began her career as a high school science teacher in Northampton County, NC through Teach For America. She then spent two years on the West Coast leading the expansion of Microsoft’s TEALS computer science education program into California. In 2016, Vichi participated in the Innovation Next accelerator, where she received coaching from IDEO in human-centered design to develop a mobile sex education app called Real Talk, which has been downloaded over 10,000 times in over 100 countries. She also interned with SelfHelp Credit Union in Durham, NC where she created the strategy for Self Help’s branch expansion into Eastern North Carolina. In 2017, Vichi co-founded Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI). ROI builds the capacity of rural communities to support people’s healing from generational trauma to achieve health, safety, connection, and self-determination.
Connect with Vichi on LinkedIn
Resources:

• ruralopportunity.org
• [e-mail]
• @ruralopportunity on Instagram

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