Early Learning, Everyone Benefits Campaign
From 2015-2019 Carolin managed a national collaborative campaign with 27 member organisations to increase access to quality early learning for all Australian children before they start school.
She gained extensive media coverage for campaign initiatives, including two editions of the State of Early Learning in Australia report (2016 and 2017), coordinated Early Learning Matters Week, which saw more than 100 MPs and Senators visit early childhood services across Australia in 2018 and 2019, and impacted political party policies leading up to the 2019 Federal election.
World Doula Week Campaign
In 2017 and 2018, Carmen ran Melbourne-based non-profit Birth for Humankind’s annual community fund and awareness-raising campaign for World Doula Week.
As an organisation that works to improve maternal health outcomes for women experiencing severe socioeconomic disadvantage, Birth for Humankind provides free doula support to women from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds, young women and women with a history of trauma. Through powerful storytelling and eye-catching marketing materials, Carmen helped create, manage and run a wildly successful campaign two years running, helping Birth for Humankind exceed its targets by 400% and gaining media coverage across major publications including Kidspot, 3AW and Natural Parent Magazine. Through this campaign, Birth for Humankind was able to provide free doula support to 40 more women across greater Melbourne.
Early Action Report
Carolin developed the advocacy strategy for The Benevolent Society in their 200th anniversary year, which focused on the need to increase early intervention strategies for families with children under five.
A key achievement was quality media coverage of the launch of the Acting Early, Changing Lives report in October 2013 by the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC TV and ABC Radio current affairs programs, and Mamamia written up in this presentation Making the Worthy Newsworthy for the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) CommsDirect forum (2014):
16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign
Through her work in women’s health, Carmen helped coordinate and resource global advocacy and activism campaigns at a local level including Week Without Violence, the Clothesline Project and 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
These campaigns are designed to shine a light on the prevalence of family violence and violence against women in our community. By creating digital toolkits, media release templates, social media posts and facilitating workshops for local activists to promote their messages of non-violence online, Carmen helped these community-based initiatives enter the digital world and ensure their longevity. Now in their 20th year thanks to the tireless work of local activists and the coordination of Women’s Health In the North, the Week Without Violence and Clothesline Project campaigns continue to use these digital toolkits, key messages and social media strategies to spread messages of non-violence online for generations to come.
Children’s Safety in Family Law Campaign
In 2011 Carolin led the strategic development of a collaborative campaign to make children’s safety the highest priority in family law cases.
The Children’s Safety First campaign mobilised hundreds of individuals and organisations to make submissions to a parliamentary inquiry, organised a colourful rally on the Federal Parliament Lawn, generated print, radio and TV media coverage and resulted in significant improvements to the Family Law Act in 2012.