PARTNER CONTEXT
V2I leveraged skills based volunteers from a fortune 500 company to support Children International’s (CI’s) regional offices in developing a coordinated and centralized web presence in order to spread the word about their youth employability programs. Having both international and in-country teams presents many challenges for CI, especially around communication. Having similar messaging but different audiences, purposes, and ownership can lead to misunderstanding and a lack of information and digital presence.
Given the wide-reaching nature of CI’s work, they had endeavored to empower local country offices to manage their own websites back in 2015. Unfortunately, due to competing priorities among other reasons, in-country CI websites became defunct or failed to follow the evolution of the main CI website, leading to inconsistency in terms of brand, information, and security.
Local employers specifically look to hire youth who have participated in CI’s programs, demonstrating the growing need for local offices to be able to talk about and run their youth employability programs on a CI-coordinated website.
However, due to the nature of working with minors, not only do these websites need to meet general internet regulations in their respective countries, they must have sufficient cybersecurity to protect children’s information.
As these requirements become more complex, it becomes a necessity to have local staff running the website. Both local and international CI staff have attempted to centralize and coordinate the websites over the years, but the complexity and volume of work to be done led to it not being completed.
ABOUT CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL
Children International (CI) is a global non profit humanitarian organization that has been helping children break the cycle of poverty for over 80 years. It addresses children’s critical needs through early intervention and regular interaction in community centers.
CI’s mission is to connect people around the world in the fight to end poverty by working together, investing in the lives of children and youth, building the healthy environments they need to thrive, and empowering them to create lasting change in their own lives and communities.
CI works alongside 10 in-country offices, each located in different countries. Alongside these regional teams, CI has reached 1 million children through 67 community centers, since their inception.
THE CHALLENGE
How might we empower Children International’s local agencies to talk about their youth employability programs through a coordinated and centralized web presence?
THE INNOVATION
V2I’s skills-based volunteers began their project by conducting discovery conversations with CI leadership, their IT team, and in-country offices to determine what needs and desires each stakeholder had for their future websites. Volunteers took into consideration the types of languages, cybersecurity requirements and cultural elements that each stakeholder required and focused on their most urgent short-term needs.
The volunteers then conducted research on global website best practices and how other global organizations organized their own multi-country websites. Based on the data collected and the initial discovery conversations with stakeholders, volunteers produced a research readout that was then used to develop a website strategy approach recommendation to support CI in getting buy-in from senior leadership and to start planning for the resourcing that was needed.
OUTCOMES
Immediate Outcomes (1-2 weeks post-project)
- Increased understanding of how to implement a global website strategy
- Increased confidence of CI staff to take the next step in implementing their global website strategy
- Increased knowledge of the challenges and desires experienced by in-country CI offices
- Increased knowledge of industry best practices for a global website strategy
- Increased knowledge of how to maintain and extend the high standards of cyber security of the current website to any additional web presence.
Intermediate Outcomes (6 months post-project)
- Increased support from CI leadership and general staff, and across CI for implementation of the global website strategy
- Increased ability to continue developing the CI global website strategy
- Increased understanding of budget required to implement the recommendations
By the numbers…
- 50% of volunteers felt that they have a very positive impact on Children International
- 50% of volunteers reported that their opinion of their employer increased as a result of the volunteer project
- 100% of volunteers reported that they would recommend participating in a skills-based volunteer project to a peer
- 100% of volunteers reported that they would participate in another skills-based volunteer project
- CI staff reported that, prior to leveraging skills-based volunteers, they were knowledgeable of best practices for implementing a global website strategy. Post project, this reporting increased to very knowledgeable of best practices for implementing a global website strategy
- CI staff reported that they became very knowledgeable of the challenges faced by the in-country offices of Children International, post project
- CI staff reported that they became very knowledgeable of the desires of in-country offices of Children International, post project
- CI staff reported that they are confident in taking the next step to implementing the global website strategy
- CI staff reported that they are 100% likely to recommend V2I to other organizations
VOLUNTEER FEEDBACK
Previous
Next
PARTNER FEEDBACK
Previous
Next
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)
Increasing the capacity to sponsor refugees in Canada has many wide-ranging impacts, but we find it is easiest to examine our work through the lens of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Throughout the design and implementation of this design sprint, as well as the resulting projects, we will have helped progress the following SDGs:
