STAND captures participant learning through pre- and post-programme questionnaires, direct observation rubrics (a scoring guide used by facilitators to evaluate the quality of students' increased learning), and through video interviews at training days. The candid video conversations reveal powerful learning. For example, Lorraine, a 2020 participant, shared her learning across the interconnected domains of knowledge, skills, values and actions:

…the issue of gender equality is very complicated, and even to bring up the subject with some people tends to cause disharmony.  My view is that we need to include as many people as we can…This is a big societal issue that I can’t solve on my own, but even if I raise awareness and I raise discussion and debate, and a bit of education, that might help to progress things. 

The most significant result of the Ideas Collective is that the participants have the knowledge, skills and self-belief needed to create a successful project for social change.  Furthermore, the Ideas Collective facilitates the positive social change which is created through the participants’ projects. Some of the projects increase public awareness and engagement through podcasts, articles, campaigns and events.  Other projects deliver an innovative product or a practical service, such as an app or a volunteering initiative. The annual programme draws to a close when the new academic year begins, but the impact of many projects is sustained. 

Since the inception of the Ideas Collective in 2015, the success of action projects varies years on year. Of the 20 projects developed in 2020, for example, nine are now active and in varying stages of being implemented, with another four or five still developing and therefore partially active.

For some of the participants, the Ideas Collective is an onward step from other programmes run by STAND or its parent agency SUAS. For example, students Aisling and Ali were SUAS volunteers in India in 2013, where they witnessed first-hand the poor working conditions and environmental degradation behind the fast fashion industry. Motivated to take action, Aisling and Ali joined the Ideas Collective in 2015 and developed an innovative community network for sharing clothes. Five years later, Aisling has now grown NUW into an award-winning app with a large membership in Ireland and the UK. This story illustrates how synergies across the wider SUAS organisation created a substantial collective impact. 

We can state confidently that the Ideas Collective plays a key role in the projects that it ‘incubates’. Furthermore, the Ideas Collective nurtures young change-makers who will transfer their learning to create impact wherever their activist journey takes them.  

Images:

• Design Thinking in Action (picture 1)
• Ideas Collective Group, 2019 (picture 2 and main page)
• Learning about Global Issues with Bobby McCormack (picture 3)

Credit: Suas Educational Development