Double the Impact: Building Org Capacity & Youth Leadership Simultaneously
If you asked me to make a website three years ago, I would have laughed and said, “You’ve got the wrong person.” It turns out that the folks at EMA had much greater faith in my capabilities than I did.
Youth leadership is at the core of EMA’s philosophy. When I began working at EMA in 2021 as a 19-year-old, I didn’t really know what “youth leadership” meant. What I soon learned was that it meant I would be trusted to do projects I was actually interested in. In other words, I was not micromanaged, and I had the agency to choose where and how I devoted my time.
Due to my interest in public health, the EMA team suggested that I support one of our long-standing partners, Children of the Forest (COF). After learning that COF has a multisectoral approach to assisting stateless children, single mothers, and families on the Thai-Myanmar border, I was determined to work with them. As someone who had just left a pre-pharmacy academic path, I craved understanding systemic levels of support for under-resourced communities, rather than individualized care.
In one of our first meetings in August 2023, I was briefed on the need for a new COF website, since their site had been overrun with viruses. I had made small free websites on Wix before, but I did not think I’d be able to create a comprehensive site that could encapsulate everything COF has to offer. But the EMA team trusted me! And I knew this meant I would get the chance to understand COF intimately and better understand how different organizations and institutions address health inequities, so I went for it.
COLLABORATION, CO-CREATION, AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project management was difficult with numerous tasks to track and many different avenues of communication, from Slack to email to WhatsApp to Zoom, not to mention the time difference between California and Thailand. But I naturally began taking over facilitation of our meetings and action items and developed a trusting, reliable relationship with the COF team.
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Creating the new website also meant refreshing COF’s branding and messaging, so I also worked alongside EMA’s internal Communications team. Our Director of Communications & Design, Cedrick Gustave, created a new logo and brand deck that gave COF a more modern style (due to Thailand’s regulations on logo changes, COF couldn’t implement the new logo across all areas, but it has been used on new reports and other materials).
Ced also mapped the organization so that website visitors could more easily understand the geographical scale of COF’s work. Meanwhile, EMA’s Communications Manager, Anna Crawford, supported me in visualizing COF’s Theory of Change and staff structure, turning them into beautiful pieces that accurately represent COF’s workflow and framework.
THE IMPACT FOR CHILDREN OF THE FOREST
This project has supported COF in a number of ways, as noted by COF Project Manager Mark Curragh, who worked in partnership with me from start to finish:
COF has often been told that we have a strong and compelling story, but for a range of practical and capacity-related reasons, we have not always been able to tell that story as clearly or consistently as we would have liked. The development of the new website has already made a significant difference in this regard. Its structure, visual quality, and functionality have greatly improved how we present our work, our values, and our impact to external audiences.
Feedback from supporters and partners has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly in response to the two documentary films featured on the homepage, created by award-winning filmmaker Henry Kinder [and produced by EMA]. These films have helped convey the depth and complexity of our work in a way that written text alone cannot, and they immediately engage visitors with the realities faced by the children and communities we serve.
Internally, the new website and organizational mapping process have been equally valuable. Staff have expressed a renewed sense of pride and motivation, seeing COF positioned clearly within a wider ecosystem of organizations working on similar challenges for vulnerable children. This has helped strengthen internal understanding of roles, relationships, and shared purpose.
From a practical perspective, the modern website setup has enabled us to produce and distribute newsletters more efficiently, maintain regular contact with supporters, and strengthen our fundraising and communications capacity. The additional visual assets and logos designed by Cedrick have also been extremely helpful. While our primary logo must remain unchanged due to Thai registration requirements, these new design elements have allowed us to present a refreshed and professional look across recent reports and communications.
Overall, this collaboration has supported COF not only in telling our story more effectively, but also in strengthening internal clarity, confidence, and connection—laying a stronger foundation for future outreach, partnerships, and sustainability.
THE POWER OF YOUTH AGENCY
As for me, I have learned so much from this experience. My technical tasks on this project involved copywriting, drawing mock-up website wireframes, consolidating reports, creating a report template, developing a theory-of-change model, and reimagining staff structure. Through every step, I met with Mark to ensure that each piece accurately reflected COF’s mission and story. My consistent communication with COF allowed me to effectively align teams and produce a website that exceeded COF’s initial needs. My own expectations of what I could achieve were exceeded, too.
What I’m most proud of is the growth in my ability to co-create with Mark, collaborate with multi-functional teams, and discern how organizations can address health inequities. The process of aligning folks and adapting to COF’s needs was truly gratifying.
And it allowed me to dream bigger.
