Author Archives: Carla Ordonez

Carla’s Skill Set

I am a consultant for the Administration of Child Services, my daily job duties focus on recruitment from child welfare partnering agencies. I am also a hairstylist at a beauty salon and bridal agency and use social media to promote my work and grow my clientele.

  • Project & Stakeholder Coordination: Experienced in managing large-scale training programs, collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to ensure smooth implementation and adoption. This skill would be transferable for any project, to foster partnerships and manage any platform.
  • Data Analysis & Reporting: Skilled in monitoring participation trends, tracking user engagement, and leveraging data insights to improve platform performance and user experience.
  • Community Building & Advocacy: Strong relationship management skills, having worked with various agencies to foster engagement and trust.
  • Technical Proficiency: Experienced in Microsoft Office Suite, Stata, and R, taken workshops in html coding, QGIS, and python.
  • Communication & Outreach: Adept at creating strategic communication plans, liaising between different organizations, and addressing user concerns to improve satisfaction and participation.
  • Digital Marketing & Project Growth: Experienced hairstylist who utilizes Instagram to showcase work, engage with followers, and attract new clientele, demonstrating expertise in social media marketing and audience building.

In all, I have extensive experience in project coordination, data-driven decision-making, user engagement, and marketing—key skills for building and managing an online platform.

Project Pitch: The Digital ACS (Amplifying Community Stories)

Objective:

The Digital ACS: Amplifying Community Stories is a digital platform designed to create a collaborative, centralized space for the New York City Child Welfare community. It seeks to provide an interactive and accessible hub for families, youth, researchers, and advocacy groups to share experiences, access resources, and document the communities’ effort towards systemic change within the child welfare system (otherwise indicated as family policing or family policing system).

Importance:

The project aims to provide a safe, anonymous and interactive space for families and youth affected by the NYC’s Family Policing system. While numerous advocacy groups, media platforms, and legal organizations highlight issues faced by the community, there is no existing digital space that allows for real-time engagement, community discussion, and historical documentation of lived experiences in New York City.

 

Audience:

Families and youths affected by the family policing system

 

Team Structure:

  • Project Led/ Stakeholder Liaison
  • Web Developer
  • Marketing 

 

Implementation:

The platform will focus on the ability to create posts. Participants may share a written post, picture, and/or link. Posts will be encouraged to be tagged within categories (Resources, Media, Story) or audience may create their own. Each post will be geotagged to an approximate location. The secondary portion of the platform will include a searchable archive of initially three-five pieces that highlight the lived experience within Family Policing, these pieces will be categorized into Stories and the team will geo-tag to the best of their ability. The stories posted by the audience will continue to populate the archive. Thirdly, the geo-tagging will be used to populate a map, to visualize the location of the posts/content/archive. The initiative will be rolled out in phases, beginning with platform development, followed by community outreach and engagement.

The platform will be developed in three phases, ensuring a structured and sustainable approach:

  1. Phase 1: Platform Development
    • The platform will be built using WordPress, integrating a blog-based structure with features for user engagement.
    • A foundational archive will be created with three-five key pieces documenting lived experience
    • A tagging system will be implemented to categorize content into three primary groups: Resources, Media, and Stories.
    • Users will be able to post content, comment, and engage with the material interactively
    • A geo-tagging feature will allow users to tag their submissions, and also tag the initial archive with location data to populate an interactive heat map created by QGIS that visually represents content distribution and thematic trends across NYC
  2. Phase 2: Community Engagement & Marketing
    • Connect with Graham Windham (Child Welfare Provider Agency) to recommend our platform to their clients
    • Connect with RISE Magazine, an online platform that shares impacted parents stories and raises awareness about family policing history and policies.
    • Look for partnerships within in CUNY especially Hunter Silberman School of Social Work
    • Create a social media page, either Facebook or Instagram to promote the platform
  3. Phase 3: Launch, Continued Marketing, Future Planning
    • Platform will be monitored after launch to ensure high user experience, marketing will continue to encourage content creation
    • The platform will integrate with social media via hashtag-based content aggregation (#digitalACS) to amplify voices beyond the website
    • A long-term content management strategy will be implemented to ensure sustained engagement, including periodic content reviews, user-driven content additions, and continued advocacy collaboration

 

Challenges:

  • Minimal skills in QGIS
  • Lack skills in Web development
  • Audience is very diverse, culturally and linguistically