Launched in 2013, the Catalyst program built used design-thinking to train change makers throughout the safety net who could introduce and champion innovation within their own organizations, and help other safety net organizations discover new ways to advance their work.
As CCI takes on a new cohort of Catalysts, this report from our evaluators looks at what worked about the Catalyst pilot and how Catalysts have been changing the safety net.
“The Catalyst program is important for a number of reasons. First, these are people who are working in resourceconstrained environments and often working with some of the most challenging people in the state. They are newly energized to do things differently, think differently. Our hope is that through this, it will get the entire organization to think differently, be more open to taking risks, and see the power of applying these methods to problems they’ve been looking at the same way but now with a new lens. The hope is that there will be new ideas and innovations developed out of this Catalyst program that will not only work within their organizations, but that can be spread to others. It’s also important for others to see the power of being able to take this way of thinking and apply it to some of the most challenging problems in the state.”
Veenu Aulakh, CCI Executive Director