World Pulse

Jensine Larsen is a digital impact leader, international journalist, social entrepreneur, and global women’s storytelling for social change expert. She founded World Pulse as a safe digital platform and community where women can speak directly to global audiences. Over the past decade, Jensine pioneered the world’s only independent, women-led social network connecting tens of thousands of grassroots women from 190+ countries and strengthening their social impact. 

Through World Pulse, members have impacted 17.4+ million lives  as a result of their new global movements, businesses, and advocacy changing policies and oppressive social norms. She is a frequent speaker on how technology design can accelerate women’s global power, appearing in media from NPR to BBC and on stages like the Social Innovation Summit. She is an Academy for Systemic Change fellow and recipient of the UN Media Social Impact Award, Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award, SXSW Award Finalist, and Bioneers Innovator Award.

What if you could solve most of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by solving one? The UN asserts that fulfilling gender equality is the best chance we have to fix the these challenges —from economic and health crisis, to climate change, violence against women, and escalating conflicts. While women are disproportionately affected by these problems, research across sectors shows that they also possess ideas, expertise, and leadership to solve them. 

The World Bank’s recent report notes the pace towards gender equality remains slow. World Pulse speeds up the pace using the power of technology to activate the leadership of women globally. We do this through our safe, stable digital platform and proven global online leadership, storytelling, and digital skills programs.

Not only do women not have an  equal voice in any nation, no nation is estimated to reach the 2030 gender equality SDG targets. That will take another 100 years, according to the World Economic Forum. 

The Internet and social media offer an historic opportunity for women and girls to be heard, participate in the global economy, influence policy and mobilize to accelerate change.  Yet, digital solutions must account for a deep digital gender divide that is holding back women’s ability to lead change. Currently, there is a 25-40% gap in access to the Internet for women and girls in low to middle income countries. Once online there is also a knowledge gap for women and girls on how they can safely use the web to improve their own lives and communities in light of structural barriers like safe access, internet shutdowns, and trolling, doxxing, and privacy concerns. 

Although there are thousands of separate women’s organizations, there is no uniting online community - other than World Pulse- linking women worldwide who are online where she can speak without fear, have her voice break through the noise, and quickly access a network of support and resources to build her dreams. 

World Pulse is a women-led and designed global digital platform that accelerates women’s leadership. Our digital empowerment formula combines a safe, supportive online community with story amplification and digital skills training, which rapidly expand women's leadership and power.

There is no fee to join World Pulse. Once a woman joins, she starts her digital leadership pathway. She is warmly welcomed with a menu of first steps, opportunities to share her story, access to a resource marketplace, and network with changemakers who share her interests. Interactions lead to leadership roles with incentives such as virtual badges and benefits including training, promotion of her writing, and recommendations for scholarships and awards. A digital ambassador program equips her to train her own community in digital skills. A storyteller program publishes her story, provides payment, editing, and disseminates it to media partners. A featured changemaker program supports her to launch her own campaigns on issues like child marriage and climate change. An impact dashboard in the platform helps her track her progress to goal and provide actionable data. 

Community members report that global visibility and network connections on WorldPulse.com is instrumental in gaining tangible increases in their campaigns and access to networks and resources.

Today, the World Pulse network is made up of 73,000 members, primarily women, who log on from 190 countries and all walks of life. Annual community surveys reveal the 90% are women and 77% between the ages of 25 and 54; They are most likely to live in areas in South Asia, Africa, and North America. They include women with disabilities, indigenous women, LGBTQIA, survivors of violence, and refugees. They are most likely to access the internet through a mobile phone.  

They typically have a burning desire to grow their leadership and lift up their communities, especially the most marginalized. Repeatedly, they tell us that they come to World Pulse at a low point in their lives, feeling dejected, alone, burdened, and hopeless from the struggles of daily life.. This transformation propels them to take action and change their circumstances and communities. 

We also serve institutions that need to listen to the voices of women and girls for responsive decision-making, but find them difficult to access, like international forums, institutions, media, and NGO partners. They benefit from our trusted, curated content and crowdsourced reports that can inform their coverage and policies. 

Globally, women’s representation is 24% for parliaments, media, and business. Data from the UN and World Economic Forum show increasing women’s leadership at all society’s levels is the most effective strategy to solve global challenges. World Pulse catapults influence for the grassroots women leaders who know their communities best and are implementing solutions. They are leaders, caring for vulnerable populations, who often lack the access and skills to gain funding or deliver their messages to the halls of power.  We also provide a unifying online platform for the collective voices from women’s organizations that are typically small, scattered, and under-resourced.

I grew up homeschooled on a rural farm in the US Midwest and was paralyzingly shy. l felt my voice trapped inside of me whenever I faced crowds or public streets, even though I knew I had something to say. 

At 19, I traveled to the Amazon as a freelance journalist where indigenous women asked me to tell their stories of their children dying from cancer from oil spills. Later, I traveled to Burma where women refugees who survived sexual assault and deaths of their families due to ethnic cleansing would ask me to tell the world their messages. One night, exhausted from listening to their traumas and hopes, I looked up to the stars and I saw the vision of World Pulse, a network of women across the globe connecting to break their silence and band together to heal themselves and the world. I knew that I could no longer just be a messenger but instead strive to enable women to have the stage and tools to be their own messengers and tell their own stories to the world in their own words. I realized I needed to create a global communication network where grassroots women speak for themselves. 

"On World Pulse, we can speak our heart out, without restriction or technological barrier. Coming from conflict-ridden Kashmir, I owe my success at the global level to World Pulse, who was a powerful facilitator to me” - A. Bashir

Over the past decade, it has been my job to listen to the voices, pain, and dreams of women and girls from every country across the globe. I am riveted by the experiences and determined energy they are transmitting online, whether it is from maternity wards in the South Bronx to schools under plastic tarp roofs in Karachi. Women and girls are showing us intricate paths forward and they are up to the task of implementation. Local women community leaders hold crucial knowledge and are already taking action. All we have to do is partner to create spaces and infrastructure to foster their collaboration and support their visions. From personal experience, I know that that flame of your own voice buried inside your body burns painfully. But, once released it is a treasure. There is nothing I’d rather do with my life than partner with these leaders to create systems that activate the wealth of women’s voices at a mass scale. 

I founded World Pulse around the same time as Facebook and consciously took an opposite path - using my experience as a journalist to do everything with integrity, do no harm, and use technology for the public good. This meant building a platform structure and community culture that welcomes the most unheard voices, that takes its lead from women change makers, where the community can chart the strategy. Our algorithms were not to build addictive clicks - but to foster a comment section that brings out the best in humanity. I never sought a unicorn for unbridled growth or profit, but to deliberately move our technology development at a pace where we could build deep trust and ownership.  

With a decade of expertise I’ve grown a system-wide view for how to unite the women’s and tech sector for collective impact. I’ve interviewed 50+ women’s organizations to recommend how we can increase our collaboration using shared digital platforms. I’m regularly invited to share my views at philanthropic conferences on strengthening women’s movements with technology and I build ecosystem maps as a member of a Equals.org, a coalition of 100 stakeholders from government, business, and civil society bridging the gendered digital divide.

In the past decade I’ve proven that I am an unstoppable, resilient entrepreneur and ensured our community is too.  Building a thriving online community is hard - only 5% of online communities survive after five years. We are one of the last global women’s space standing strong. Unfortunately,14 similar communities started and then closed their doors - we’ve absorbed some of those networks. 

I pioneered as a woman technology social entrepreneur, learning everything from scratch, with few role models to guide me.  When starting World Pulse as a nonprofit, I learned women’s organizations receive less than 1% of philanthropic funding and women technology entrepreneurs less than 2.8% of venture funding.

As a young woman, funders told me that my vision too big and complex.They didn’t think I could grasp the technology. Or, they wanted to invest in one country or one issue, when I knew we needed to connect women across geography and issues. With no funds, prototype, or experience in technology, I leaned into my vision and inspired a board, advisors, and pro bono volunteers to bootstrap everything. It took years to gain seed funding to pay staff, plus $30,000 from my own credit cards during the 2008 recession.

I’ll never forget the night I discovered the core of my leadership. It was 2am after having launched the beta of our online platform, unsure if it would work.  I was exhausted and working nonstop, but I had to stay up. That day, women had started posting their accounts of post-election violence in Kenya.

Suddenly I heard a message notification.  It’s Leah, a new member from Kenya who recently wrote about gunfire in her street.  She types. “You must rest. Don’t worry I am carrying the flame.” Then, “I know this is the site where the presidents will come to test the security of the women and children.”  An indescribable feeling of relief rushed through me. I realized Leah’s dream was my dream - it was our dream - and even in the midst of a crisis she would carry it. I knew then I would never give up and members like Leah were the true leadership of World Pulse. From that moment on, I ensured we co-created  with the community in every step, from the website features to community policies and a culture of reciprocity and support unlike any other on the web.

Last year, World Pulse was spotlighted as the future of women’s movements on the plenary stage at the largest women’s conference of the decade, called Women Deliver. Cameroonian World Pulse leader, Chi Yvonne Leina (Leina), lit up the stage speaking alongside the founding legends of past and current movements, #MeToo, #TimesUp, and South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement.

“When women gather online even the patriarchy is forced to bow,” said Leina. She argued that by putting the digital communication tools into women’s hands to speak for themselves, build their own collaborations, and define their own impact, World Pulse is charting a path to turn top-down dominant models of international development that African women face on its head. Women can now bypass the institutions, businesses, and NGOs that speak for them and connect directly with each other and global audiences, holding the powerful accountable, and leapfrog forward their own visions. For example, our impact dashboard for World Pulse members allows them to track and update their progress on their goals directly on the platform thereby have a global audience and visibility for their initiatives.

And now, COVID is pushing the world online faster. It's time for World Pulse to grow assertively.  Online spaces are no longer just supporting spaces for women’s movements, they are now primary spaces.  Women and girls on the ground are bearing the brunt of the crisis but are an untapped, largely silenced, but very powerful force for social, cultural, and political change worldwide to build a resilient post-pandemic future. 

Our theory of change, “The World Pulse Effect,” uses our digital empowerment framework, the process enabled by digital technologies that involves greater access to three interrelated dimensions: 1) Voice 2) Connection 3) Resources that together contribute to women taking action individually to collectively transform their communities. These definitions through World Pulse are: voice, women come to believe in their capacity to speak and be heard to effect change they seek despite constraints; connection, women expand their global network and build supportive and reciprocal relationships to mobilize for the change they seek; resources, women access and exchange material and informational resources and opportunities that enable them and others to make the change they seek happen.

Examples of activities and visible actions are: 

Voice: Strengthened voice; increased sense of being heard; increased self-efficacy and visible action of exercising her voice to take action.

Connection: Expanded global network; increased supportive and reciprocal relationships-Increased new connections (# new connections and visible action of taking on leadership roles to support others.

Resources:Increased in access to resources and opportunities; opportunities sought/received  (Awards,  Funding, Scholarships, Fellowships) (% reporting) and visible action of training and providing resources for others.

Examples of outcomes are: Decision-making (“When they influence and make decisions and when they establish and act on goals”); leadership (“When women and girls lead and inspire social change and effectively participate in governance to improve the status of other women and girls as well as themselves”); collective action (‘When they stand together in solidarity and exercise voice to transform institutions and power relations”). Our members impact is the number of people they impact through their work/involvement with World Pulse. 

Impact: Years of data demonstrate that on average after 2 years of being active on World Pulse a woman expands her impact to impact an average of 2,000 more people in her community.

Our Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) framework examines how digital empowerment leads to members taking action for personal and social change. Our MEL research is led by Jasmine R. Linabary, PhD., an expert in safety and inclusive participation in digital and physical spaces. 

Today: We directly serve 42,000 members through our online community, 13,000 (31%) who are considered “Contributors” and the remaining are “Readers” who also derive benefit.  Contributors are the most active members, creating content, interacting, earning badges, and advancing as leaders.  Of these leaders 115 are digital ambassadors from 25 countries who have provided digital skills to 50,000 more in their communities. 

One (1) Year:  We estimate directly serving 50,000 members, 15,000 (30%) who are “Contributors” actively advancing their leadership.

In Five (5) Years:  We will serve 500,000 members, 65,000 who are “Contributors” actively advancing their leadership

 Our online community engagement surpasses traditional benchmarks for online communities which typically feature 10% contributors.

We set our goals in three areas:

1) Today: Grow Leaders:  

• Provide an accessible online leadership pathway and safe environment to accelerate women’s leadership growth and offline impact

Success in 5 Years:  A proven digital leadership accelerator

• A tipping point of 500,000 new women leaders across all sectors are impacting 1 billion more in their communities in every country of the world.  Lead the technology sector setting standards for digital inclusion for women’s voice and agency

2) Today: Raise the Volume

• Source crowdsourced content on timely issues of importance for women globally and promote their collective voice to advocacy partners, media, and institutions. 

Success in 5 years:  A megaphone for women’s global grassroots participation.  

• We are are a trusted, go-to source channeling women’s voices to world media and global decision-makers to influence policy, culture, and decision-making

3) Today:  Link Movements

• Network women leaders and organizations across regions and topics to facilitate online and offline collaboration, knowledge sharing and impact tracking

Success in 5 years:  A network of networks shifting power 

• A trusted global platform facilitating deep cross-sector movements building and providing rich impact data that helps transform international development from top down to ground up, led by women’s movements.

Financial: 

• Need to raise major funding for technology that has a non-commercial purpose with strict guidelines on ethics

• Raising funding for technology and not a technology company

• Women-led organization centering women and girls and outside of the typical pathways of funding 

Technical: 

• Requires multiple competencies including lean entrepreneurial skill and team

• The “how” of World Pulse requires additional skills from our technology staff/consultants/team member because it is highly collaborative with feminist values with a broader community outside of staff

Lens: 

• World Pulse operates from an Integrated and interconnected vs. silos (such as issue, identity, and geography) 

Marketing:

• Global marketing within the same platform

Language and disability inclusion:

• Moving from an English dominant site that does not have disability inclusion

Shifting culture: 

• Fighting sexism and promoting gender equality and combatting perceptions about women and girls as not being experts  
• Leveraging the expertise of those on the ground: There is a strong perception in international development and elsewhere that “experts” on the problems are found outside of the communities and people who are most impacted. 

Financial:

• Multi-year funding packages that are alliances and building partnerships that will test possible revenue strategies for the future 

• Ethically sourced content and partner portals that are co-branded service modules to test and then roll out for revenue 

Technology: 

• Sourcing expertise and solutions from a global tech eco-system and leveraging global advisory network members as well as pro bono resources or partners

Shifting culture: 

• Work with cross-sector (government, corporate and nonprofit/NGOs) partners that already have these values, but have more of leverage in the wider community 

• Produce, amplify and get endorsements on thought leadership 

Marketing:

• Global marketing within the same platform will be addressed by leveraging our Global Advisory Network, our new Global Voices council (well known leaders validating World Pulse) 

• Assistance from the Elevate Prize if awarded 

Language and disability inclusion:

• In order to move from an English dominant site that does not have disability inclusion we would look for new innovations in technology, partnership with language translation capacity 
• And build in disability inclusion into a new platform as it is better to build new than try to retrofit something old

World Pulse plays a critical role in the growing ecosystem of organizations and networks seeking to advance the rights of women for large scale social change requiring cross-sector coordination. For many organizations, World Pulse provides a core capability that they do not. For example, there are organizations—like Telecenter.org, Women and the Web Alliance, and WomenWill (Google)—that provide basic digital access for women, but World Pulse provides the space where their participants can promote their voices and build a global network.  

Another core capability World Pulse provides is amplifying movement building. World Pulse partners with advocacy networks to crowdsource voices, link together leaders across organizations and networks, and promote grassroots initiatives around a given issue. For these efforts, ongoing partners include AccessNow, UNWomen, Beyond Access, Alliance for Affordable Internet, and Change.org. World Pulse is seeking to forge additional collaborations with Women Deliver, Manifesta, Women’s March Global, and Just Associates.

World Pulse’s most intensive partnership is a pilot of a model with women’s organizations with different capabilities who co-create leadership training and capacity building around economic empowerment. Collective Impact Partners (CIP) includes Rise Up, World Pulse, Global Fund for Women, Global Women’s Leadership Network, and the Public Health Institute. CIP works with in-country organizations and networks to provide wraparound support for emerging women leaders—from training to coaching, to grant-making, to digital empowerment, and amplification of campaigns. This pilot's goal is to build the capacity of and connect leaders in India to advocate for economic empowerment.

Currently funded by foundations, private funders, and values-aligned businesses, our 10 year strategic plan includes revenue diversification and targets 50% of our annual budget to be derived from earned revenue.  

We are in the process of incubating and testing two revenue models, content agency and tiered membership, which are detailed in our path to sustainability.

Our 10 year strategic plan includes revenue diversification and targets 50% of our annual budget to be derived from earned revenue.  

We are in the process of incubating and testing two revenue models:

1. Content Agency -  Ethically deliver crowdsourced reports and impact data for a fee featuring global women’s stories, perspectives and recommendations to international institutions, funders, and advocacy partners.  Increasingly decision-makers for policy and resources would like to consult with women and girls directly impacted - but they rarely do. Multiple barriers hinder their good intentions - including lack of trusted, timely entities for sourcing input. World Pulse has access to a trusted global network and expertise in crowdsourced campaigns to meet this need. 

2. Tiered Membership - Similar to NPR, in this model basic membership to World Pulse is always free, but we estimate 2-3% of members will subscribe to tiered membership levels to receive curated content and networking opportunities with top women changemakers based on their interests.  Paid members also “pay it forward” with their membership fees helping to underwrite World Pulse’s online digital training programs to ensure free access to women globally who need it. 

In addition, World Pulse is presently evaluating transforming our governance structure to a nonprofit platform cooperative model to be fully owned and led by our members who derive the most value from the platform. In this model, paid members would also hold a stake in World Pulse governance alongside staff, and active community leaders. 

World Pulse has long term funding relationships with several foundations, private funders, and values-aligned businesses such as NoVo Foundation, Oak Foundation, Channel Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Vodafone Americas Foundation, Equinix, as well as the German Government. We have a rigorous funding filter and policy to maintain our independence as a digital platform which prohibits more than 49% of our annual budget to be accepted from governments or businesses.  

However, our 10 year strategic plan targets 50% of our annual budget to be derived from earned revenue and we are in the process of incubating and testing two revenue models:

1. Content Agency -  Ethically deliver crowdsourced reports and impact data for a fee featuring global women’s stories, perspectives and recommendations to international institutions.

2. Tiered Membership - Similar to NPR, in this model basic membership to World Pulse is free, but we estimate 2-3% of members opt to subscribe to tiered membership levels to receive tailored content and networking opportunities with top women changemakers based on their interests.  Paid members also “pay it forward” with their membership fees helping to underwrite World Pulse’s online digital training programs to ensure free access to women globally who need it. 

World Pulse recently launched our $15M Log On. Rise Up Funding Campaign, to fund our 10-year plan to digitally support 500,000 women who go on to grow their leadership to impact one billion across the world. We conducted a feasibility study with more than 75 experts across the spectrum of womenʻs empowerment and technology to inform the campaign. We secured commitments for 30% of the campaign and now, we’ve just launched the second phase of the campaign to raise the next 30% of funds to support our work from 2021-2023. These funds will support our three-year “Raise the Volume” phase, investing in the expansion of our digital infrastructure, online leadership training programs, and outreach partnerships to accelerate our impact with exponential numbers of women leaders. 

Phase Two Campaign Funds support 3-year milestones: 2021-2023 

• 20,000 grassroots women grow their leadership and impact 40 million more in their communities, across 10+ topic areas – health, economic power, technology, environment

• 200 Digital Ambassadors train women in digital empowerment in 50 countries

• 100 Featured Changemakers launch and expand online campaigns

• 10 amplification partnerships with media & decision-making forums

• Leaders featured on 18 online topic and region hubs aligned with SDGs

• Leaders introduced to curated funding, scholarships, award opportunities

• 10 amplification partnerships with media & decision-making forums

• Digital impact dashboard launched to enable women to self-report their impact goals and progress towards sustainable development goals, putting power in their hands to define and track the impact that matters to them.

• Develop and test sustainable revenue models:  content agency, tiered memberships

2020 Budget: $1.559,614 

Personnel: $863,007

Consultants, contractors, professional services: $446,735

Total Programs, Operations and Administrative expenses: $247,372