World Pulse's First Impact Lab: A Reflection

World Pulse’s First Impact Lab was held on March 27, 2025, at 2 PM UTC via Zoom. The event is an innovative offering designed to elevate community-driven initiatives through advisory and peer collaboration. The event brought together six participants to engage with a panel of four experts in a collaborative engagement to understand ways to scale, enhance, and sustain the impact they are making on ground.

Our six participants came from all over the world.

1. Adeeba Shah from Pakistan aims to impact 10 women who have experienced gender-based violence through a digital campaign that will raise awareness, empower survivors, and challenge social norms. Her goal is to empower women and girls so they lead their lives with dignity and freedom.
2. J Brenda Lanyero, from Uganda, wants to impact 10 women and teen mothers in her community through a financial literacy program, in order to help them acquire a measure of independence. She dreams of a future where women are free of gender-based violence through economic empowerment.
3. Nigeria’s Jefiter Mang wants to impact 1000 girls aged between 10 and 17 years by enrolling them in school through a dedicated campaign aimed at removing barriers to education. She wishes for a future where girls are economically empowered, and envisions education as the first and key step in that direction.
4. From the US, Jill Langhus wants to empower and reintegrate 100 women who have been trafficked globally back into society by teaching them a viable trade and by providing them with income. She envisions building a tech platform to support the sale of the products survivors make, so they gain economic empowerment.
5. Queen Sheba, from Senegal, wants to impact 1000 women, girls, and orphans through her sustainable village, Queen Sheba Village, which is a transformative community focused on empowering underserved populations through sustainable development, education, and cultural preservation in Senegal, West Africa.
6. India’s Rasika Sundaram wants to support 1000 survivors of gender-based violence and gender-based violence service providers in India by building trauma-informed practices that they can embed and implement to support survivors on ground.

Our panelists, Anita Shankar, Ann Witsil, Busayo Obisakin, and Sharmin Prince offered guidance and meaningful feedback to support these initiatives on ground. While Anita and Ann offered insights on potential collaborations such as SVRI and Population Council, they also provided useful guidance on ways to make impact sustainable on ground through key connections and establishing collective engagements with established providers on ground. Anita’s experience working with creating and curating trauma-informed spaces came in particularly handy for the work that Adeeba, Jefiter, Jill, and Rasika are curating on ground. Ann’s insights into strategic planning were especially meaningful for all the participants’ focus and approaches to planning. Busayo and Sharmin, having already been community members at World Pulse, were also able to offer meaningful suggestions from their own experiences as community members making impact on ground. Busayo’s journey into supporting survivors and strategically focusing on community engagement were particularly helpful to all six participants who are keen on scaling their impact. Sharmin’s approach on programming was useful for the participants, who were looking to find ways to make their actions on ground count. Sharmin provided guidance on some of the insights she had gathered through collaborative work and an exchange of skills.

Alongside the live feedback within the Impact Lab, our community also engaged actively, providing feedback for each initiative by way of guidance using a Padlet platform that helped sustain a steady stream of insights and guidance.

Watch the recording here: