Swara is a social enterprise in India that organizes women into collectives to produce fashionable clothing at fair wages, while also strengthening community organizing and empowerment. In partnership with the Laidlaw Foundation, Swara hosts cohorts of scholars for on-the-ground leadership development and cross-cultural learning experiences.
For Laidlaw scholars, spending weeks embedded in communities is transformative, but it can be difficult to capture the depth of learning, growth, and emotional experience that occurs over the course of the program. Swara wanted to measure specific areas of capacity-building, such as leadership and cross-cultural understanding, but needed a way to do so systematically across multiple participants and over time.
Before launching their field program, Swara worked with Simba to design longitudinal survey questions that assessed these key qualitative areas, including baseline and endline surveys. Scholars then completed daily WhatsApp diary entries heavily utilizing voice memos for quick and easy survey completion, reflecting on their experiences, challenges, and personal growth. Simba’s AI-powered sentiment analysis reviewed entries both by individual participants and across the cohort, surfacing patterns in sentiment, learning, and leadership development over time.
With Simba, Swara and Laidlaw gained a richer understanding of how participants changed during the program. The data revealed clear arcs of learning and growth, with participants reporting increased leadership confidence, greater cross-cultural awareness, and stronger community ties. The insights gave Swara concrete evidence of program impact, while providing Laidlaw with actionable feedback to strengthen future leadership development initiatives.
Swara uses Simba’s WhatsApp diaries and AI-powered analysis to track leadership and cross-cultural growth over ten weeks among program participants in the field.
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