Challenge Guidelines

(still under construction)

Welcome to the Girls Build LA Challenge!

We are excited to have your team participate in the newest initiative of the LA Promise Fund.
Girls Build LA empowers teams of young women from LA County to identify the issues that they
see as most significant in their school and community, and take action to address them. The
challenge will draw attention to the problems that girls face everyday, allow teams to pilot
interventions, and ultimately facilitate meaningful change in Los Angeles.
The following pages outline the various components and requirements of the project. We hope
that this guide helps you get started on your projects and becomes a resource for you and your
team for the next few months as you work to design and implement your project.

Table of contents
Challenge Identification
Timelines
Student Involvement
Phase 1.
Uses of Funding....
Reporting and Check-ins..
Documenting the Process
Scholarships.
Final Presentations..

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Challenge Identification
In your application your team selected one of three impact areas that you want to address in
your school community. Challenges can vary across campuses, but should reflect the needs as
seen by students. Each team must address one of the following key impact areas of Girls Build
LA:

Health & Wellness - The physical and emotional and mental health of students is paramount to
their success, academic and otherwise. Focusing on this challenge area can empower students
to think holistically about their community, or the needs of the individual. If your students want to
address issues related to trauma, stress, physical health, or culture this is the impact area for
you.

Civic Engagement & Leadership - Students need to feel a part of their community, and aware
of the impact they can achieve. This can come through traditional mechanisms, like voting,
advocacy and organizing. It can also come through building relationships with community
partners, or investing in skill building for students to help them achieve their potential as
influencers. This is the area for your students if they want to educate and empower your school
community, and make investments that lead to sustainable change.

Education: STEM & College Access - In 10 years there have been three times as many new
jobs created in STEM related fields than in other field. But in LA County women represent just
24% of the STEM workforce. Young women need to be equipped for the economy of the future
by attending college and building skills and experience that can be applied to 21st century
careers. This is the impact area for your team is your students want to help lead the charge for
gender equity in the workplace.
Setting Goals: Think about what it is that you and your team hope to accomplish. Who are the
people that you most want to influence? Do you want a project that will last for one year?
Multiple years? Set a vision and then work backwards as you develop a project proposal.
Understanding the Context: Generating a solution will be rewarding and challenging. Make
sure you are exploring the causes that might be responsible for the issue you want to address.
Often times the beginning steps can be developing assumptions about the issue. Have students
brainstorm why they think something is the way that it is. Once they have developed
assumptions they can begin to unpack and challenge them. This can happen through a variety
of activities and tools including:

Interviews: Students may consider interviewing other students, teachers and community
members for their perspectives.
Research: Students can research the kinds of issues and interventions that exist in other
communities. Here is a great resource to see student projects and winning teams from last year.
Processing: Try to organize the information that you collect into themes and categories. From
there look for trends or connections that exist across individuals or information. Useful questions
include:
What are behaviors or actions that you notice related to this issue?
How might people feel or think as a result of this issue?
Who is most affected by this issue?
Is it everyone?
Are underlying similarities between those most affected?
Who are the primary stakeholders?
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What might they be motivated by?

What will this issue look like in one year? Five years?
Online Technology Resources at http://girlsbuildla.weebly.com - Teams will have access to
online resources to integrate technology into the project. We will help you:
Use Google Drive to save and share documents, images and video
Develop a website using Weebly.com
Tips to develop successful and social media campaigns and videos
Provide links to outside competitions, coding, and opportunities
Project Proposal: Once you have identified the underlying causes, and the stakeholders, you
can develop a detailed project proposal. Think about your ultimate goal, and how to get past the
underlying causes to achieve it.

Brainstorming: Frame questions using the phrase How might we...if and pose questions
using constraints. For example How might we accomplish this if we were one of the interview
subjects? or How might we do this if we had $1,000,000? Make a Bubble map to share out
ideas.
Guiding questions:
What bothers you at school or in community?
What do you wish existed or could be better?
What are your ideas for improvement and change?
Selecting ideas: What are the ideas that resonate? Which ideas come up multiple times? Look
for ways to pull ideas together and synthesize them into one comprehensive project.

Existing community resources and strategic partnerships: Local organizations or

community leaders can help provide resources, drive awareness to the issues you care about,
and keep projects moving in future years. How can you bring in other people to support your
work? Think about:
Community partners and local non-profits
School staff
Other student clubs
Other schools
Sustainability: Think about how to build a project or cultivate investment in something that can
last beyond a semester. This might be through engaging a new partner; it might be part of how
you develop a project (for example incorporating a transition plan to future students). How can
you do something for your community that will last?
Measuring Impact: Look back on the goals that you set for your solution, and ask the question,
how do we know we are being successful? Then think about how best to capture that. Is it the
total number of students involved? Or the total number of people from the community that you
were able to work with? Are there other ways to capture information or represent your success?
Cost: Plan on a budget of $1500 or $2,000 for your project (depending on whether you were
given two laptops). It will be important to make the money last, and use it as efficiently as
possible. You will get the money in January. Are there ways to leverage that investment to gain
additional resources?
Timelines

PHASE 1 - BRAINSTORM and DESIGN

October 17

MANDATORY ORIENTATION DAY at USC

Each participating team will be invited to a Design Challenge to learn and
practice how to design and create a digital footprint for this project that
includes building a website, running a social media campaign and recording
engaging video.

Oct - Nov

Teams develop proposals for their award; ongoing support available

through LA Promise Fund

December 1

PLANS ARE DUE VIA WEBSITE Teams will receive training and materials
to organize all your ideas, events, and artifacts in a website to create a
digital footprint of the project.

Dec-Jan

Plans are reviewed and approved by Girls Build LA staff

January 23-27

Funding is awarded

PHASE 2 - IMPLEMENTATION
Feb - March

Implement your project, collect evidence of your impact and document your
story.

Feb - March

Send progress update through web site, social media, and video

April 7th

Final written project due through web site

May 13

Final presentations - awards, scholarships and other prizes

(tentative)
Student Involvement
The Girls Build LA Challenge is intended to be student driven and led with support from a
project coordinator throughout the duration of the project. This support includes, but is not
limited to, coordinating team activities, facilitating regular team meetings, assigning team roles,
managing timelines, managing grant funds, and communicating with LA Promise Fund.
Involving Students
It is critical that students feel ownership of the outcome and high levels of engagement
throughout the entire process. It is also important that they feel a sense of camaraderie with
their fellow team members and can operate in an inclusive and supportive environment. The
project coordinator can play an important role in co-creating with their students supportive

structures that enable them to work effectively together towards their project goals. Whether by
organizing students in sub-teams, assigning roles to students based on their desires, or rotating
leadership roles among team members, students must be given opportunities to lead, be led,
and to collaborate with their peers (including other team members and other members of their
school community) and their project coordinator.
In the application you were asked to share the names of up to 10 girls participating from your
team. Though some applications included more than 10 girls, we can accommodate a maximum
of 10 girls in the final presentation. The reason for this is the limited funding available for
scholarships that girls will compete for at the end of their projects. If you applied with more than
10 girls please do your best to elevate 10 as leaders who will be responsible for the final
presentation in April or May.

Expectation of Time Commitment

We expect that team coordinators will spend 5-10 hours per month supporting their teams with
the following potential breakdown of hours:
Team Check-ins: twice per month 30-60 minutes
Meetings with individual students or sub-teams: several per week 10-15 minutes each
Independent project work: 2-4 hours
We anticipate that student team members will spend 3-5 hours per month working
independently or with other team members on assigned portions of the project and participating
in team check-ins.
Regular Check-ins
Team coordinators should work with their teams to determine the appropriate frequency, time,
and purpose for team meetings. We suggest that at a minimum, teams are meeting at least
twice per month to discuss their projects, including successes and challenges, and determine
next steps. A suggested agenda for project check-ins is below:
5-10 minutes

Energizer - activity to promote team camaraderie & culture - each meeting

these activities could be hosted by a different team member (think about
sharing a riddle, playing a quick game or take a quiz)

10-20 minutes

Whip Around - each team member shares 1 success, 1 challenge, and 1

shout-out to another team member they appreciate

5-10 minutes

Timeline & Grant Fund Update - the project coordinator shares team
progress against their timeline and grant funding

5-10 minutes

Questions

UNPACK THE PROJECT/ JOB BREAKDOWN

As a team you must all work to accomplish the tasks but it helps to know who will lead what
since there are a lot of moving pieces. Here are some sample roles as you get started:

Project Manager - set timeline - oversee deliverables -manage file sharing and communication
Set up Google Drive to share with team, add pages with account information
Create a Sample Timeline
Create a Sample Budget

Writer - promo for video/ write on website

How are you going to communicate your message?
What is the team goal? Why is this the goal? What data/research can you offer to make your
point?
Web Designers - build out main pages
Create navigation of the pages
Embed RSS feed for Twitter/ Instagram
Embed videos and images
Social Media Producers
What is your handle for different social media. Be consistent
60% promotion of other like -minded organizations, 30% self-promotion 10% fun
What can you share to inspire? Motivate? Enage? Connect? Your audience
Spokesperson
Who is your key spokesperson? Is it everyone? Who can explain the project in person and on
video?
Videographer - record and edit
Shoot and edit the videos.
Videos should be loaded to Google Drive or YouTube
Videos should be embedded onto website and shared via social media
Art Director - Logos
Be consistent with your messaging
Create a logo/slogan - some kind of branding that can be used across platforms - fliers, website,
social media, video, etc.
Researcher
What already exists that you can use to inform, leverage or use as a resource for your project?
What questions do you need to ask your target audience?
Finance
You wont get your money until January.
For now, make a budget about how you will advertise and execute your project and research the
costs.
PHASE 1: Due December 1, 2016

Please email girlsbuildla@lapromisefund.org by December 1st with a link to your website.

You can organize the site as you best see fit but we expect to see the answers to the following
questions:
Project Proposal: What is your project idea and WHY
Research - what did you do to find out what has come before or already exists?
Resources - What input or engagement of outside resources did you use for this project or
share with your community?
What is your plan to execute this vision?
How will you do it?
Where will you do it?
What is your timeline for the project?
What is your budget for the project?

Suggested page Navigation:

About - brief description of project and team
Team bios - add roles each took on for this project
About the School/ Community - connect to why the need of this project

Project Proposal -with subpages

Research - what did you do to find out what has come before or already exists?
Resources - What input or engagement of outside resources did you use for this project or
share with your community?
Plan to execute the project - how will this specifically address your school/community?
Budget
Timeline
Media and Images
Images from events/ meetings/ planning/ brainstorming/ Orientation Challenge
Images of your advertising
RSS Feed of Twitter/Instagram Feeds
Uses of Funding
Award Funds
Girls Build LA Funding can be allocated at the discretion of the team. Each team must complete
the project within the $1500 spending grant (if you received two laptops) or $2000 (if you did not
get laptops). Before the grant is awarded each team must submit a project proposal with a
budget via their website. These plans are due to LA Promise Fund for review by December 1st,
2016. Every team that completes the proposal and budget to the satisfaction of LA Promise
Fund will receive the grant, but LA Promise Fund reserves the right to withhold funding if the
proposal is deemed deficient.
All funds must be tied to the implementation of the established project, and pertinent to the
identified impact area. Projects can benefit the neighborhood, and broader school community,
and do not need to be limited to a school campus. The funds cannot be used for outside
service providers.
LA Promise Fund may seek receipts for all supplies and items procured using award dollars. If
receipts are not procured the award can be recouped by LA Promise Fund.
Any elements of the project that are implemented using additional resources will not be
considered when making scholarship or prize decisions.
Coordinator Stipend
Project coordinators will receive a $1,200 stipend for providing support to their teams. Stipends
will be disbursed according to the following guidelines:

Responsibilities:
Recruiting up to 10 girls to participate in the project
Creating a time and space for teams to meet
Communicating regularly with GBLA
Take care of logistics for events from the school side
Manage how and to whom checks will be deposited at school site for the team budget and
secure how funds can be and will be properly spent.
Collect information from the students in the event the team wins one of the scholarships
Attend the Orientation Event at USC on October 17th
Attend the end of project Expo on May 13th (tentative date)

Deadlines:
Turn in Media Release Forms for ALL students by October 17th.
Turn in completed w9 and signed contract by November 1st
Have Principal sign GBLA contract by November 1st
Complete and turn in Phase 1 of the project via Weebly.com by December 1st (NO
EXCEPTIONS)
5. April 7 - Turn in student information in the event your team wins one of the scholarships.
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If all these deadlines are met then the Stipend will be processed in December and a
1099 will be issued in January.
Reporting and Check-ins
LA Promise Fund is committed to providing the necessary support to team coordinators and
their students to ensure maximum learning and program success.
LA Promise Fund Coach & Check-ins
Each team coordinator will be assigned an LA Promise Fund staff member or partner to serve
as their liaison and technical advisor for the duration of the project. We will set up scaffolding
deadlines to update your website during stages of the project.
Impact Area Expert Mentor
Each team will have access to a mentor with experience in their specified impact area.
Volunteer mentors will be matched by LA Promise Fund with teams within the first month of the
project development phase. It will be up to the teams how much or how little they leverage their
mentor throughout their project and teams can determine how they want to engage with their
mentor (i.e. structured check-ins, ad hoc emails or calls).
Video Diaries
LA Promise Fund will secure media release forms for all students participating in this program
who opt into - with parental consent - being photographed, filmed, and interviewed.
We ask teams to take video diaries of their projects. These will be posted on a video diary page
of your website (to be explained later in this document) These will be simple updates typically
responding to a prompt such as, What challenges did you experience this month? or How is
the program being received on campus? Videos will be under 3 minutes maximum.
Documenting the Process
Each team will document the year long Challenge through keeping all artifacts in website (we
will provide support for Weebly, but ultimately the location and hosting of your site is your
choice). Teams will also create a social media presence and create videos showcasing the
team, the project plan and execution of the project.
Website:
You will use the website to document the process and answer the questions for Phase 1. We
encourage you to use the website to host everything you create and do. In that regard please

embed any videos and social media feeds you use to showcase the efforts. This also goes for
adding any advertisement or press releases your produce.
Social Media:
Every team should decide which social media they will use in order to promote the message of
the project and connect to your community and audience. We recommend Twitter and
Instagram. Teams can use a #hashtag or create a page. We will also help promote your
messaging if you include #GirlsBuildLA.
You can also include a social media feed into your webpage to continue the process of
documenting the progress and the process. Remember this is a learning experience and can be
used as an artifact for the school, team, and individual members to use as leverage for future
opportunities.
Video:
GBLA will send you video challenges throughout the year in order to help you share your
stories. Again, these videos are to help document this project and can be used as material for
social media and the website. Videos should be short, engaging and relevant.
Scholarship Awards (tentative)
In April and May, students from Girls Build LA teams will compete for scholarships at three
levels. There will be first, second and third place awards for three teams in each the high school
group and in the middle school group. Each student on the winning team will receive a
scholarship. Scholarship checks will be made payable to the student when they have provided
proof that they are enrolled in a higher education institution. Scholarships for middle school
students will be held and will be payable upon high school graduation and enrollment in higher
education institution. Each student will receive an award letter confirming their scholarship and
providing instructions for future disbursement. Scholarship funds are intended for use in paying
for tuition, books, school supplies, and other costs facilitating the students participation in
higher education.
High School Scholarship Awards:

First Place - $1,000 for each team

member

Second Place - $750 for each

team member

Third Place - $500 for each team

member

Middle School Scholarship Awards:

First Place - $1,000 for each team

member

Second Place - $750 for each

team member

Third Place - $500 for each team

member

Project Presentations and Award Criteria

Student teams will return to their schools after the October 17th Orientation Design Challenge to
design and implement their solutions and reconvene in spring to report on their experiences and
compete for awards. Judging will be done by LA Promise Fund and community partners and will
be based on:

Shared ownership by team members working collaboratively as a cohesive team

Clear understanding of challenge taking the challenge as presented and making it specific to
their school community
Specific, measurable and actionable outcomes identifying solutions that are feasible and will
reasonably produce the desired outcomes
Community engagement outreach to local businesses and or community groups to seek input,
resources, and foster engagement in the project
Sustainability and feasibility - ensuring that there is a plan for impact longer term, or the ability
for students to continue the work
Presentation and creativity effort in creating materials and providing a strong presentation
Project presentations should include the following:

Presentation Length - Presentations should not exceed five minutes with two minutes for judge
question and answer.

Team Member Participation - Each student member of the team should have a speaking role
in the presentation. Team adult leaders should not participate in the presentation and no
additional speakers from outside the team should be included.

Visual Aids - Teams are strongly encouraged to use visual aids which may include static
visuals such as posters, media presentations such as video or PowerPoint, or artifacts from the
project.

Presentation Content - Presentations should include the following components:

Challenge - explaining the challenge they chose to address
Solution - describing the intervention or program the students designed to address the
challenge and why they felt this would be successful
Implementation - describing how they conducted their work throughout the year
Results - outlining how impactful their solution was and what data they collected to show that
impact
Lessons learned - reflecting on anything that was surprising or that they would have done
differently in retrospect