MyCompass Missions Feature

Thanks to long time MyCompass feature patron, disability rights and systems change advocates Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion (BACI), we are pleased to announce that an innovative new module will be added for all MyCompass users in the next few months.

MyCompass co-founders Skills Society and Southern Alberta Community Living Association have been researching and prototyping a companion module to MyCompass over the last few years. With learning from the co-creation alongside people with disabilities, support workers and social innovators, the prototype is now ready to be integrated into MyCompass. Thanks to feature patrons BACI this is possible.

The key challenges the MyCompass Missions R&D team has been trying to work on:

1. People who have had limited experiences in the world often need support to discover themselves- their gifts, likes, wishes, new things to try as an engaged community member. Just asking often isn’t quite enough.
2. Support persons(staff) often struggle with being creative to help people they support to learn about themselves, try things at home, in their neighbourhood and community.
3. Each group using MyCompass will need to be able to create their own missions with the built in mission making tool. Possibilities for mission creation are pretty much endless.

What are MyCompass Missions?

People supported might be out of ideas of what they could explore about themselves, their home, and meaningful things to do. Support persons also may have trouble coming up with ideas to explore, or new activities to try.

The MyCompass Missions feature provides guided "choose your own adventures" to learn about yourself, deepen connections at home, connect with a friend or neighbour, or learn about how to get more engaged in one’s neighbourhood or community. The missions module helps people to learn by doing - to try things, and reflect on whether they would like to explore more, or start a hobby or turn an interest into something to continue more deeply on a regular basis.

These missions support people to get creative, and explore meaningful things that aren’t just “outings” but foster more meaningful connections and finding oneself.

In MyCompass there will be a selection of missions that are connected to explorations in 5 core pillars of - Home Life, Relationships, Health and Wellness, Employment, Community Connections. But each organization will be able to create their own modules as they like.

Missions might be:

• Explore trails in your neighbourhood
• Discover your favourite five things about your home
• Start a pen pal relationship
• Check out a virtual exploration of museums in the world
• Attend an event at your local library
• Go Garage Sailing on a Saturday to Find a treasure
• Bake cookies for a friend or neighbour
• Get engaged in community with a cause you care about

Users select a mission and are guided through the activity, following the given mission instructions. Some instructions will also include reflections in the form of photos or video of what one likes about an exploration or didn’t like. At the end there is the opportunity to share the mission they just completed to their timeline or create a goal to continue further explorations.

There are endless opportunities to the missions that can be created, and organizations using MyCompass could convene people they support, staff and creatives to imagine and design meaningful missions for individuals and the organization as a whole.

In addition this feature helps make it easier for support persons to connect the people they support with creative and meaningful explorations that creates mutual learning and respect.