Building Responsive Design with GBA+

The Fundamentals

Overview

When a new program or service is developed, the goal is to create a positive impact for the community. However, even with the best intentions, initiatives can unintentionally create barriers or fail to reach the people who need them most.

This happens because standard data often highlights averages while masking the lived realities of diverse groups. Designing for a neutral user model that fails to reflect the complexity of lived experience creates significant systemic risk. For system designers and practitioners, this means resources are frequently directed toward solutions that fail to gain traction or actively exclude the very people they are meant to support. When we design for a middle that does not exist, we often build systems that are technically sound but practically inaccessible to people with intersecting identities such as those living in rural areas, individuals with disabilities, or newcomers navigating unfamiliar bureaucratic landscapes.

GBA Plus provides the practical steps needed to fix this by replacing assumptions with evidence. It ensures your work is based on how real people live, helping you spot who is being left out and adjusting your plan so it actually works for everyone it is supposed to serve. By applying this lens, practitioners move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive design, mitigating the risk of project failure and ensuring that public and private resources translate into meaningful, measurable results for the entire community.

What We Will Explore

During this 50-minute session, we will cover:

The Core Concepts: Understanding GBA Plus as a process.
The Analytical Steps: How to move from challenging initial assumptions to gathering meaningful evidence.
Responsive Design: Translating findings into practical recommendations that improve program outcomes.

Event Details

Date: May 20
Time: 10 a.m. PST | 1 p.m. EST | 2:30 p.m. NST
Format: Online

Who This is For

This session is designed for practitioners, analysts, and project leads who want to understand the GBA Plus process and how it can be used to improve the quality of their initiatives. No prior knowledge is required.

About CCGBA+

We advance people-centred policies with GBA+ to ensure inclusive, transparent and accountable decisions. We support organizations to move beyond good intentions toward approaches that are grounded in accountability and the realities of the communities they serve.

Lead Facilitator

Serah Gazali

Serah Gazali is the Executive Lead at the CCGBA+, where she provides strategic oversight for the integration of intersectional frameworks into high-stakes policy and program design. With over a decade of leadership experience, Serah has advised numerous national organizations on aligning their operations with rigorous GBA+ standards to ensure institutional impact. A graduate of UBC with a Master’s in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice, she specializes in bridging complex research with practical, data-driven implementation. Serah is recognized for her ability to navigate systemic challenges and deliver responsive, evidence-based results across the Canadian public and private sectors.

This event has ended