About Our Projects
Over the past five years, IDEO.org, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has partnered with childcare advocates, educators, parents, and organizers across the country to reimagine what childcare in America could be. Together, we’ve been laying the cultural and narrative groundwork for a future where childcare is understood and funded as a public good.
Through design, storytelling, and deep collaboration, this work connected the dots between local movements already transforming care. We designed a nation-wide collaboration across leaders who are reframing childcare not as a personal burden but as a shared responsibility and public investment in our collective wellbeing.
From community visioning workshops to movement storytelling and design tools, Reimagine Childcare has built the infrastructure for cultural and narrative change—and co-developed a shared vision that allows groups across the nation to work toward the same north star. Together, they’re revealing what an abundant childcare system can look like when rooted in interdependence, trust, and reverence.
A shared vision for abundant childcare
A living, evolving vision for the future of childcare, shaped by educators, providers, parents, and advocates across the country.
Narrative change and storytelling tools
Resources that help movement leaders tell powerful, unifying stories that advance the movement.
Localized engagement campaigns
Communications design, messaging, and coaching for localized campaigns to engage early childhood educators, parents and families, as well as voters.
Reimagine Childcare centers the people most impacted by inequities in the current system, BIPOC families, home-based providers, and community advocates. Our approach is grounded in trust, creativity, and the belief that imagination is a form of infrastructure. By nurturing spaces for connection and collective dreaming, we helped partners articulate bold visions, test ideas, and design towards our future vision. We believe systems change starts with story—by reshaping how people see, value, and talk about care, we make a more equitable future feel both possible and near.
This vision is not ours alone. It belongs to the many partners and communities working together to make abundant childcare a reality. Thank you to the families, providers, and advocates across the country who continue to imagine, build, and fight for that future.
The Child Care for Every Family Network . The Empire State Campaign for Child Care . The Family Conservancy . Geaux Far Louisiana . Growing Our Futures Colorado . Home Grown . ImpactSTATS . Kids Count of US, ISAIAH . MDC Inc . Ohio Organizing Collaborative
