JA Worldwide: Youth Voices

“The project enabled us to obtain qualitative impact measures, look at trends and themes from youth as related to our strategic plan, and create a repository of youth voices and impact stories.”
Sarah Rapp, Director of Alumni and People Engagement, JA Worldwide

One of the largest youth service organizations in the world, JA Worldwide develops young peoples’ skillset and mindset to build thriving communities. To elevate this vision, JA was looking for a viable way to incorporate the perspectives of the many young people they serve into their strategic planning efforts.

But with an overwhelming amount of unique experiences to collect, understand, and share, they needed a platform with the ability to capture and discern these insights at scale.

With this purpose in mind, JA Worldwide discovered Cortico.

For the first time in the organization’s history, students and alumni shared their experiences with the program in small-group conversations. In collaboration with Cortico, JA trained a team of Youth Voice Facilitators to lead recorded discussions among and give voice to their peers.

After uploading the conversations to Cortico’s speech processing platform, JA leadership, Cortico, and MIT Center for Constructive Communication researchers came together and engaged in the process of sensemaking. Leveraging digital and AI-supported tools, the team worked to highlight and thematically organize the stories and experiences that were shared.

In addition to guiding strategy, these outcomes position JA Worldwide as a connector of youth voices, reinforcing their global position in promoting youth empowerment.

Since the findings were first published in June 2022, Cortico has worked with JA alumni to incorporate 25+ additional conversations. Together the organizations built a sustained channel to regularly collect alumni voices that continue to inform organizational direction.