The problem behind the website
AEEM's work was happening, but it was not always easy to understand from the outside.
Activity updates and reports were shared across social platforms and documents. Someone discovering the organisation could have to piece together what it did, who it served, and what had happened. People interested in volunteering or partnering also needed a clearer route from interest to action.
The challenge was therefore bigger than creating a polished website: make AEEM's work easier to understand, revisit, and explore.
My role
I initiated the website direction and worked across the process: shaping the information, planning the user journeys, designing and building the site, deploying it, and maintaining it. I later volunteered as AEEM's Chief Operating Officer.
Because I understood the organisation and its activities, I could recognise where the digital experience needed more context and clearer next steps. That familiarity was useful, but it also meant I needed to distinguish my own assumptions from evidence gathered from visitors.
The decisions that shaped the experience
I focused on the questions a potential volunteer or partner might need answered before deciding to get involved.
- Explain the organisation first. The About experience needed to make AEEM's purpose, people, work, and direction easier to understand without requiring visitors to assemble the story from scattered posts.
- Connect understanding to action. The paths for volunteering, partnering, and supporting the mission needed to be easier to find and follow.
- Make activities inspectable. Reports and activity documentation needed a central home, so visitors could explore what AEEM had done rather than rely only on social updates.
- Adapt reports for the web without losing their substance. I condensed source reporting into a more scannable format while preserving its key message and supporting detail.
These were deliberate priorities: explain why the work matters, provide evidence of the work, then make the next step clear.
What I built
The site brings organisational information, participation pathways, and documented activities into one place. Activity pages can combine context, photographs, participant experiences, and reported findings, giving each programme a page that people can return to and share.
One example is the “I am Somebody Initiative,” part of the “Everyone In, No One Out” programme. Its documented activity took place in Freetown on 29 January 2025, involving 42 participants from six schools. Instead of leaving the account buried in a social update or a separate report, the site gives it a dedicated page with the activity details and supporting material.
The result is a working website that makes AEEM's story and documented work easier to explore in one place.
What we know—and what we don't
The site is live and in use. The core team reviewed its pages and navigation, shared feedback, and responded positively. I also observed the website being used on an occasion with volunteers.
That is evidence that the site was implemented and received encouraging internal feedback. It is not yet evidence that public trust increased, more volunteers signed up, partners engaged more often, or funding improved. Those outcomes have not been systematically measured.
I want the case study to be as careful about that distinction as the product work itself.
How I would evaluate the next iteration
The next step is to test whether the clearer structure helps people outside the core team. I would measure a small set of practical signals:
- Can a first-time visitor explain what AEEM does and find a relevant activity report without help?
- Can a prospective volunteer or partner find the right next step?
- Which report pages and participation pathways are visited, and where do visitors arrive from?
- How many enquiries or sign-ups are completed through the site?
- What information do visitors still struggle to find or verify?
A few usability sessions, basic journey analytics, and feedback from prospective volunteers and partners would establish a useful baseline. Until then, I would treat improved discovery and participation as goals to validate—not results to claim.
What this project taught me
A website does not create evidence simply by publishing information. It can make existing work easier to discover, understand, and inspect; whether that changes someone's confidence or behaviour must be tested.
That is the distinction I would carry into future projects: start with the questions people need answered, build the smallest coherent experience around those needs, and measure whether it actually helps.