Becoming an Adaptive & Resilient Organization: 3 Lessons from Zahra Ebrahim (Civic Engagement)
This article is part of a series profiling innovative organisations from various industries. Find all of the articles here: Becoming an Adaptive & Resilient Organization: 3 Things We Learned During COVID-19.
This series is part of PH1 Research’s mandate to provide business leaders with free resources to improve their customer and employee strategies during this crisis.
The COVID-19 Toronto app has become the go-to resource for Torontonians who want to understand and overcome this public health crisis — and become a stronger community as a result of it. There are four main sections: Give, Need, Health, and Fun.
“Give” is for folks who are looking to give time, money, food, etc. “Need” is for folks needing financial aid, housing support, grocery (and essential supply delivery, etc.) “Health” covers mental health and health resources, and “Fun” is activities (mostly free, a few heavily discounted) that you can engage in online or at home with simple supplies.
While the daily news of new infections and deaths makes individuals feel helpless, this app strives to give communities hope. The positive emotions and moments of surprise that this app helps connect are part of the reason the project has grown from a modest call for help into a framework now being used in multiple cities around the world.
Zahra Ebrahim is a citybuilder in the most classic of definitions and one of the developers of the COVID-19 Toronto App.
She’s obsessed with making the cities we live in operate more effectively at the human and neighbourhood scales. She previously founded and led archiTEXT, a design-based innovation studio, and is currently the co-lead on the Community.Design.Initiative., which engages marginalized youth in architecture and design in Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods. She has taught at OCAD, MoMA, and currently teaches within the University of Toronto Scarbrorough’s City Studies program. She serves as a board member and advisor to Jane’s Walk, St. Stephen’s Community House, Centre for Connected Communities, Toronto Public Library, and ResilientTO.
3 Lessons About Adaptability & Resilience from COVID-19 Toronto app (Civic Engagement)
Zahra’s story is compelling in so many ways, perhaps none more so than the fact that Ilan Shaninan — the ER doctor who co-developed the app with her — and herself did what any other person is capable of. Their solution required no technical background and it helps communities precisely because of its simplicity.
#1 Technology makes it possible for anyone to have an impact
Zahra and Ilan didn’t set out to make an app that would be used by multiple cities, their ambition was actually something very simple: to create a resource that made it extremely easy to connect people needing help to resources offering help. That’s why when they started on this project in the second week of March it began as a simple Google spreadsheet. Within two days they were overwhelmed at the amount of people offering help and the many forms of support coming from all parts of the community.
Their simple spreadsheet offered a beacon of hope for those of us who felt helpless and locked in. Within days they found Glide Apps — a platform that turns Google Spreadsheets into a web-based mobile app— and launched the COVID-19 Toronto app. This allows anyone to help by sharing the app with those in need or posting resources. The app has now had thousands of users and can be copied to be used in any other city.
The lesson is simple: a small action can create a cascading effect when we’re working towards a shared goal.
#2 In times of crisis we need surprise and delight, just as much as we need honesty
While this crisis united us through fear and honesty, the resolution to recover from it will come from moments of surprise and delight. As COVID-19 moves from a public health crisis to an economic crisis, that resolution will be vital to staying united through the next twelve-to-twenty four months before a semblance of normal returns. This is an important consideration as the charities and community organisations that have risen to the challenge may face further challenges as their funding models need to be reconsidered.
Those changes in who can help means that neighbourhoods and communities will need to become more united and resilient. Community-based resources like the COVID-19 TO app are one of the many ways communities can inject the joy, delight, surprise, and sense of support needed to balance out the uncomfortable honesty of this crisis.
#3 Thinking short-term can be the surest way to stay in a state of crisis
This crisis is being mis-represented as having peaked because the number of cases are dropping in most regions, however the impacts and disruptions will last much longer. Thanks to Zahra’s background at strategic agencies and community-organizing, she recognizes that a short-term mindset limits true innovation. It doesn’t come from successfully getting your team to work from home, nor from selling more products online, it comes from taking a long view about where we’re all headed.
Assuming that ‘table-stakes’ improvements will help your non-profit or local business to survive will only prolong this crisis. She believes that this is a moment to take the long view. Solutions will need to be bespoke and will need to be the result of understanding your community and the struggles we will be facing together. Getting there will likely take longer than we expect so managing the risk of burn out will be important as each step forward will feel more difficult as we stomp through the blizzards of economic and community challenges.
Register for the June 17 webinar How Organisations Become Adaptive & Resilient in a Time of Crisis to learn directly from some of the leaders profiled.
More lessons from this series:
- 3 Lessons from Zahra Ebrahim (Civic Engagement): Their solution required no technical background and it helps communities precisely because of its simplicity. They wanted to create a resource that made it extremely easy to connect people needing help to resources offering help.
- 3 Lessons from Young Enterprise (Education/Charity): This crisis forced the charity to quickly re-think their entire model. The needs of teachers, youth workers, students, and parents all changed and the charity had to adapt to deliver support in new ways.
- 3 Lessons from CityStudio (Education): CityStudio brings innovation, engagement, and experimentation to Vancouver’s City Hall by uniting city staff with post-secondary students, faculty, and community.
- 3 Lessons from Dr. Angèle Beausoleil (Education): The abrupt shift from in-person to online classes meant that Dr. Beausoleil had 2 days to take in-person lab-based business design, innovation, and design thinking classes and rethink how to offer the same learning outcomes digitally.
- 3 Lessons About Adaptability & Resilience from Ernesto Peña, Ph.D (Charity/ Technology): As a technology platform which has the primary goal of making giving easy, he has had the privilege of being able to study topics such as why donors stop giving and what makes them comfortable to give to a charity for the first time.
- 3 Lessons About Adaptability & Resilience from Dr. Emma Aiken-Klar (Innovation/Anthropology): Having a renewed sense of purpose in spite of this uncertainty can help teams move through these moments of change. We’re no longer what we used to be and we’re not sure what we will become.
- 3 Lessons About Adaptability & Resilience from Tyson Villeneuve (Events/Hospitality): Events as an industry effectively flatlined and we were the first to get hit: Large sports events, festivals, gatherings. The entire industry was shut down two weeks before restaurants.
- 3 Lessons About Adaptability & Resilience from Dianne Dredge, Ph.D (Tourism / Community Engagement): Her lens from the perspective of regions and tourism ecosystems that had to completely rebuild provide lessons on how industries can become adaptive and resilient.
This series is part of PH1 Research’s mandate to provide business leaders free resources to improve their customer and employee strategies during the COVID-19 crisis.
