Caring Cities: Learning From the Caregivers Sustaining our Communities
This Project Showcase is part of the Community Voting, vote here for your favorite session.
From raising children to supporting elders, caregiving sustains our societies. The labor of care bolsters our economies and provides stability in our communities. Yet, caregivers have largely been unacknowledged by governments, overlooked by traditional research, and severely undervalued in current economic systems. Care is also gendered, with the labor of care disproportionately provided by women – at home, in communities, and in paid professional contexts.
The City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) understands that care is delivered at a local scale and believes that city governments have a unique role to play in understanding and addressing the challenges facing caregivers. Caring Cities worked with three city governments from the CHANGE network–Bogotá, Buenos Aires, and Los Angeles–to learn directly from caregivers. The research approach was rooted in the belief that individuals most impacted must be at the center of solving complex challenges in order to spark equitable and transformative change. CHANGE views community-based research as an opportunity for city leaders to listen to and partner with impacted residents, especially those who have been historically excluded from decision-making processes.
The community of practice introduced by Caring Cities helped to spark new ideas, support local implementation, and build a shared global understanding and movement for gender equity.
This session is part of the “Bureaucracy 2045: Thinking Afresh” block, which runs from 15:00-15:45 CET. The sessions in this block will appear in the following order:
· 50 Days, 50 Months, 50 Years: Rethinking Bureaucracy
· Caring Cities: Learning From the Caregivers Sustaining our Communities
· Twegatte Youth Health Project
· Boosting Innovation With the Chief Exploration Officer
· ImpactAI: Shaping AI-Assisted Bureaucracy
Leslie Crosdale
Co-Executive Director, City Hub and Network for Gender Equity
Holly Milburn-Smith
Co-Executive Director, City Hub and Network for Gender Equity