Ashoka Changemakers / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Children’s Wellbeing Initiative

Changemakers and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have launched an initiative to promote children’s wellbeing in the United States. The Children’s Wellbeing Initiative is focused on securing wellbeing for every child in the U.S., from infancy to 12 years. The Initiative will support caregivers, foster changemaking, and break cycles of trauma and invalidation. Kids need to feel valued by the individuals and systems that affect them—no matter their race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or ability.

The Initiative is designed as a leadership development network for people who nurture the building blocks of wellbeing in kids – people enabling caregivers to build secure, stable relationships with their dependents, people shaping lesson plans to explore multiple dimensions of kids’ wellbeing, or people working with children of color to explore narratives around identity. The Initiative gives opportunities to people to present their unique approach, secure peer feedback, and shape a cross-sector, practitioner-led vision for children’s wellbeing that debuts at a culminating network event this October.

In the first phase, three core activities are being pursued:

• Mapping social innovations in children’s wellbeing to understand key opportunities in the sector
• Electing a cohort of extraordinary leaders to help shape the agenda of the Children’s Wellbeing Initiative
• Nurturing a cross-sector network of funders, innovators, policy makers, and others to drive a shared vision for the wellbeing of children in the U.S.

Amount: Ten Champions of Children’s Wellbeing will be elected who will:

• Shape the agenda of the first Children’s Wellbeing Congress being held in late 2016, which will bring together key funders and pioneering thinkers and do-ers in education, government, and childhood development
• Represent the unified vision of the Children’s Wellbeing Initiative
• Receive a travel and expense stipend so they can showcase their work during the Children’s Wellbeing Congress
• Be offered mentorship from experts in the Ashoka or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation networks
• Be awarded funds from a pool of $48,000

Eligibility: All organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, in the U.S. are eligible. This challenge is focused on projects that are piloting or have already piloted their models and that have documented evidence of impact. Eligible projects may address the stages of pregnancy through children of age 12.

Note that Ashoka fellows are not eligible to submit projects.

Link: https://network.changemakers.com/content/childrenswellbeing

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