Andrea Ngan

Selected Work
Offerings
About








 











2025

Year

2020 - 2023

Project

Equitable Community Engagement Toolkit





About
The Equitable Community Engagement Toolkit is a first-of-its-kind resource to support City of Philadelphia staff in engaging communities in more equitable ways. The Toolkit provides guidance, stories, tools, programming, a community of practice, long-term implementation strategy, and governance plan to support City of Philadelphia engagement staff in their work to inform, consult, and collaborate with residents.

Co-created with over 200 Philadelphians and City of Philadelphia engagement practitioners across 35 City agencies, the Toolkit builds pathways for communities to have decision-making power in the services, programs, and policies that impact their lives and well-being.

While the Toolkit was created with, by, and for Philadelphians, community engagement practitioners from non-profits, universities, foundations, and government sectors across the United States regularly reference the Toolkit in their work. 

Learn more below or listen to the first podcast episode of The Civic Design Room by Mariama N’Diaye.

Role
Project Co-Lead
Product Management 
Design Strategist


Audience
Philadelphia residents
City of Philadelphia staff
Community engagement practitioners

StudioPHL Service Design Studio

PartnersOffice of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Services
Office of Innovation Technology
Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity







My Role
I co-led this work with my brilliant colleague Danita Joyce Reese. Danita and I were provided oversight from Liana Dragoman and support from our executive sponsors Stephanie Tipton and Romana Lee-Akiyama. 

Day-to-day, Danita and I managed a cross-functional team of community engagement specialists, UX designers, content strategists, a training specialist, program evaluator, four pilot partners, software engineers, community partners, a cross-departmental advisory council, and a community advisory board. 

We led the end-to-end research, desgin, development, and implementation of the Toolkit. The work included co-leading:
  • Design research and strategy: We embraced a diverse range of research methods to understand what the landscape of equitable community engagement looked like across Philadelphia and the United States, barriers, and opportunities. This research included secondary reserach, interviews, focus groups, and collaborative workshops to inform a collective vision and strategy. 
  • Fundraising, grant writing, and grant managment:  Advocacy for this work required finding resources to compensate community members for their consultation and collaboration. We received a small internal to the City innovation grant that helped us obtain a half of million dollar internal grant from the Operations Transformation Fund. Our work led to the Resident Engagement Fund, a grant to support departments across the City in need of seed funding to engage residents. 
  • Project management and communications: We developed project management and communication tools to ensure all 200 stakeholders and the public could be kept updated on how their contributions were being implemented. We also created mechanisms for feedback and continuous engagement through newsletters and an internal and external advisory council.
  • Product management: I co-managed and hired a cross-functional team to design and develop Toolkit resources, pilot testing, and programming. 
  • Implementation strategy development: With a focus on ensuring disability and lanugage accessibility across all channels, I helped build an implementation strategy that included considerations for long-term growth and maintenance and a governance plan.


Credit: My colleagues Anthony Procik, Devika Menon, and Liana Dragoman are the root and seed of this project. It was their passion and advocacy for equitable engagement that created a foundation for this work. 








Context
Community engagement is a central method government can use to work with communities to inform policies, programs, and services. It is a method that is often misunderstood and provided little investment by government leaders. 

When government or institutions with power don’t invest in equitable community engagement:
  • Communities don’t have a pathway to shape government decisions that impact them, which can contribute to a loss of trust. This is particularly harmful for governments trying to uphold democracy. 
  • Community needs often go unmet, because decision-makers aren’t impacted and are distant from the outcomes of their decisions. This can lead to a lack of accountability when government decisions made for residents aren’t effective.
  • Communities can’t interact with government because their accommodation needs aren’t prioritized. This is common for when there isn’t enough time, funding, or culturally competant and skillful facilitators to ensure community members can access engagements. 

While these are but a few examples of why community engagement is consequential, the Toolkit was an grassroots initiated project. Created with City of Philadelphia staff during COVID-19 and the Movement for Black Lives , the Toolkit sought to create the conditions for equitable forms of engagement to occur between the City and the communities it serves. This project aimed to answer the following questions:

  • Vision: What does equitable community engagement mean to community members?
  • Tactics: How can we develop resources to support City staff in their equitable engagement efforts?
  • Operations: How do we ensure input gathered from diverse and underrepresented communities inform government decision-making?
  • Accountability: How do community engagement practitioners and departments know when they are practicing equitable community engagement at the City? 









Process
We collaborated with over 200 stakeholders in and outside of municipal government across these phases of work:

  1. Understanding: We collaborated with City staff, community practitioners, and residents to better understand their engagement challenges, needs, and opportunities for improvement. This phase led to a shared goal and vision for the work ahead.

  2. Synthesizing: After conducting 56 interviews, 12 focus groups, 20 co-design sessions, and 11 advisor meetings, we synthesized our learnings into 45 summaries and three reports. We shared these documents with stakeholders for feedback. 

  3. Strategizing: We developed a strategy for the Toolkit and mapped the guidance, tools, and training to fulfill that vision.

  4. Designing and building: We secured a half-a-million dollar grant to develop content, a digital repository, a training program, and an evaluation plan for the Toolkit pilot. 

  5. Implementation: We co-created a community advisory group to co-design key guidance and to serve as oversight for the piloting of the Toolkit with partner City agencies. 





Design Research and Strategy
 We gathered and facilitated over 100 conversations and workshops: 
  • 46 interviews with City engagement staff. 
  • 7 focus groups with City engagement staff. 
  • 3 advisor meetings with City leaders. 
  • 6 focus groups with community practitioners.   
  • 10 interviews with community practitioners.   
  • 8 community practitioner advisor meetings. 
  • 20 community co-design sessions with residents. 

These sessions informed the following deliverables. 
  • 45 summaries and three synthesized reports: The documents summarize how to improve digital, disability, and language access issues in community engagement.
  • A query-able database: A repository of over 1,200 coded data points from City staff and community members that maps engagement challenges, best practices, case examples, and recommendations for improving engagement at the City.
  • Foundational strategy: A strategy that documents the revised vision for the Toolkit based on community feedback and how that vision will show up in Toolkit guidance, tools, and training.








    Impact
    Since launching the Toolkit, the site has received more than 13,230 visits from over 50 states.

    The Toolkit is now managed by the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity (CEO). CEO is in the process of implementing the programs and maintaining the tools depicted on the right. 

    Prior to onboarding staff from CEO, I led the the process of fully translating the website into Spanish and Chinese (the top two languages spoken in Philadelphia) and updating the website to improve screen reader accessibility.






    Credits
    Core TeamDanita Reese, Co-Lead and Lead Service Design Strategist
    Liana Dragoman, Director of Strategic Design
    Anthony Procik, Lead Content Strategist
    Helen Rudoff, Content Strategist
    John Cajigas, Software Developer
    Nicole Carmichael, Program Evaluation Fellow
    Connie Vandarakis, Training Fellow
    Naomi Roberson Reid, former Director of Equitable Engagement
    Alvie Grant, Mayor’s Intern

    Partner Agencies The Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities
    The Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement
    The Mayor’s Policy Office
    The Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service
    The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    The Office of Immigrant Affairs
    The Office of Innovation and Technology
    The Office of the Chief Administrative Officer

    Community Advisory CouncilYvonne Hughes
    Vicki Landers
    Tyrell Brown
    Shimaa Mahmoud Eid
    Ousmane Ndiaye
    Meliza Reynoso
    Jazmin Banks
    Brenda Mosley
    Ava Campbell
    Antoinette Ellis

    Executive Sponsors Stephanie Tipton
    Romana Lee-Akiyama