Eleven women from five Self-reliant groups came together to form a design group. Their objective was to spread the movement to new places. They met every month to design the box, listen to feedback, make adaptions, and try each prototype out with prospective SRG members.
They thought out of the box. They came to the conclusion that if we want 1,000 or more SRGs each year, then tech was going to be part of the structure. They began to think SRG in an App, not a box. And the Tiny Box was a way of leading prospective new members to the App. They sketched our an SRG app with three functions:
- to help women form new SRGs; after a woman gets a Tiny Box, a taster of what forming an SRG could be like, and when she has a few more women who want to form a group with her, then the app is downloaded. On the app, they find information, materials, tips, games to help form and solidify the group, discover what an SRG is about, learning and developing, saving, and building enterprise. Women talked about the use of videos from existing SRG members as the primary way of sharing learning, including short live recordings of a daily life an SRG (e.g., life at the hub, at peer gatherings, SRG meetings, workshops).
- to connect all the SRGs— the women envisaged a forum on the app where women from groups around the country (and internationally) could connect, ask for advice, mentorship. Maybe there will be a geolocation function so that women can see the SRGs in their local area.
- to act as a selling platform for the SRGs—helping the women promote and further build their enterprises. At the moment SRGs buy or sell their products on websites like Etsy, where they pay listing fees, commission and standard payment processing fees. Can their SRG platform help them promote their enterprises, and therefore make and save money?
The women also started working on the concept of the Tiny Box. As they said it, ‘relationships are everything here. We first want to send something (tiny), something physical to tell you that ‘we see you’.