Summary

This citizen circle will serve as an opportunity for participants to explore the unique strengths and challenges that women face as social entrepreneurs and innovators.

Citizen circles are small, peer-to-peer study groups that develop core skills of social innovation through co-created curricula. Women as Social Entepreneurs is part of the P2PU/Citizen Circles School of Social Innovation (SoSI). Participants are expected to form a small local group to meet face-to-face as well as connect to groups in other locations online.

Throughout the course, participants will keep a field journal, recording reflections and thoughts from all activities. This field journal will be used as a resource in creating a personal monologue as well as a way of tracking the development of key competencies such as empathy, passion, optimism and others.

Discussions will be based on videos, readings and conversations with various female innovators who will serve as guest speakers or facilitators. Although we have built up a bank of possible topics and resources, this is a peer-led collaborative course and the actual syllabus and topics will be based on participant interests and input. We are open to re-envisioning the current syllabus if it does not meet the needs of the participants.

Please contact Julie or Laura if you have any questions or would like to learn more.

Learning Objectives

The course will help participants identify their personal strengths as current or aspiring female social innovators as well as the areas of weakness each individual wants or needs to improve upon. We will build understanding of prevailing gender stereotypes and the ways in which gender roles affect our abilities and access in the social innovation world.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course, but participants should have a passion for engaging in social innovation and an interest in viewing this through the lens of gender.

Sign-Up Task

Identify a small, local group (three to five members) for your citizen circle.

Develop an outline for what you personally hope to learn within the context of Women as Social Innovators. This can include particular skill sets (e.g. confidence or self-awareness) as well as topic areas you'd like to discuss.

During the first meeting, participants will be asked to share their individual plans. Collectively, we will brainstorm the topics and skills we will focus on during the course.