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Creating a Children's Coloring Storybook as a Model for Community Collaboration and Advocacy

We are proud to announce the launch of "Carlo, the Superhero Spy," a bilingual coloring book created to support and advocate for Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) childcare providers. This innovative project aims to raise awareness about the vital role these caregivers play in our community and to highlight the challenges they face.

"Family, Friend, and Neighbor caregivers are the backbone of our community's childcare system, providing essential services that allow parents to work and children to thrive," said Michelle Mejia, GAVA Early Childhood Health Equity Organizer. "This coloring book project was born from listening to FFN providers and understanding their needs and challenges. We are excited to share their stories and advocate for the recognition and support they deserve."

This bilingual coloring book tells the story of a home-based childcare provider and the community that rallies around her, emphasizing the importance of supporting and recognizing FFN caregivers.

"Carlo, the Superhero Spy" is available for free download here:

A Grassroots Approach to Making Change

Rather than a top-down approach, GAVA’s model empowers those on the ground to shape and lead efforts to improve their communities. FFN child care providers and the families that rely on their services, along with organizations in Austin such as the Maternal Health Equity Collaborative, Latinas Empoderadas en el Hogar, and ATX EC Grassroots Coalition, inform and guide our work every step of the way. 

This is a quick summary of how we’ve been working to support and advocate for FFN providers in recent years:

GAVA’s Work with FFN Child Care Providers

• Education and advocacy about FFN care on a local and state level.

• Participation in the RAPID Survey with local resident FFN leaders and Stanford University to collect local data on FFN.

• Building networks for FFN provider leaders.

• Organizing workshops and events focused on wellness/mental health of home-based child care workers.

• Advocating the local government to invest in equitable home-based child care.

• Working with the city of Austin to connect Family Stabilization Grants and emergency funds to residents and child care workers.

“Moving at the Pace of Community” - Creating a Communications Campaign for FFN Care 

In the Spring of 2023, GAVA approached Inspirare Communications, an Austin-based marketing and public relations firm, to help develop a comprehensive communications campaign to raise awareness and educate the community about FFN care. 

GAVA's objective was to transform the narrative surrounding FFN care. We wanted to shift perceptions from seeing it as an inferior option to recognizing it as an essential and legitimate form of childcare. 

Inspirare Communications is an organization keenly aware of the importance of listening attentively to what the community and clients need in order to create initiatives that will allow for open dialogue and meaningful change.

In our fast-paced world, taking the time to do grassroots work can seem tedious or inefficient. A marketing team could easily read the available literature, watch some videos, and then develop a run-of-the-mill communications strategy. 

However, if the goal is to see long-lasting, profound changes in a community, the only way forward is collaborative and participatory. We have to listen to the folks on the ground. They have a lot of clarity about what they need but don’t necessarily have the platform or the resources to do anything about it. The role of organizations like GAVA is to be a conduit between the institutions and resources, and the people who know where to use those resources most effectively in their communities. 

With that in mind, instead of devising a top-down communications strategy about FFN providers, Inspirare undertook the longer but ultimately more effective process of developing a communications strategy from a grassroots organizing mindset. 

The collaboration was a new experience for both organizations, and a process that could serve as a model for future projects. 

Michelle Mejia, GAVA Early Childhood Health Equity Organizer, reflects on her experience working with Inspirare Communications: 

“When we started brainstorming this project, we were looking for someone who would hear us out. Who would leave judgment at the periphery and really humanize the experience of home-based child care providers, specifically our Friend, Family, and Neighbor caregivers. 

Because FFN care is sometimes seen as taboo or “illegal,” one thing I always say to open conversations about it is to remember that high-quality care can happen in any environment, just like unsafe care. When working with a vulnerable population that is underpaid and underserved (both the providers and the families they care for), we have to navigate and tread carefully because we don’t want to feed into sensationalization or exploitation. 

I was happy to work with a group of mothers at Inspirare who felt connected and committed to portraying FFN providers in such a humanistic way. We were collaborators all along the way and appreciated their professionalism and how they were able to interpret the experiences shared into something like “Carlo, the Superhero Spy””.

For Inspirare Communications founder and CEO Anjanette Gautier Castro, this opportunity fits perfectly with her company's mission. She originally created Inspirare to help non-profit organizations like GAVA develop robust and effective communication strategies. 

“Working with the GAVA team and community leaders has been a transformative experience. Throughout this journey, we gained invaluable insights into the unique challenges and strengths of Family, Friend, and Neighbor caregivers and a profound appreciation for the commitment and integrity of the GAVA organizers in their approach to consensus building and engagement with the community. 

Because the subject is deeply personal and, at the same time, can be controversial in certain political circles, we wanted to accurately reflect how child care decisions can impact the community and the individual. Listening to the personal stories of community members gave us a deeper understanding that allowed us to open our hearts and minds to new perspectives and freed us to be creative and innovative in our approach. 

The collaborative process and the resulting coloring storybook have renewed our belief in the power of storytelling and strengthened our commitment to continue elevating underrepresented voices.”

From Focus Groups to a Children’s Coloring Book

The first step for the Inspirare team was to understand the issues surrounding FFN care, both at a local and national level. After reading all of GAVA’s available material, providing support with a town hall press conference event about child care, speaking to all of the stakeholders present, and gathering feedback from the event, the next step was to organize two focus groups with FFN childcare providers to understand their needs and circumstances and generate ideas for a book project. 

Focus Group Results 

The participants in the two focus groups identified their primary objectives, which were: 

• Raising Awareness: 

• Highlight the importance of caregivers' work and their positive impact on children's development and society.

• Seeking Government Support: 

• Advocating for increased support from local, state, and federal authorities to improve working conditions for caregivers.

• Addressing Challenges: 

• Analyzing issues that make caregiving work physically, emotionally, and economically challenging, and seeking solutions to alleviate these burdens.

To effectively communicate these concerns, the group proposed that storytelling, combined with a visual element, could be a powerful tool to capture the community's attention and effectively convey their messages. They proposed creating a bilingual storybook (in English and Spanish) that children could color. 

This book would tell the story of a child who relies on an FFN provider and how that child sees and interprets their caregivers' struggles. Delivering the message through this type of narrative engages children in reading while parents reflect on the value of child care. 

After the focus groups, the Inspirare Communications team drafted the text of the story, and worked with their staff artist and graphic designer, Erik Erosa, to create the illustrations for the book. After rounds of revisions with the GAVA team, the book was translated into Spanish and uploaded to the new GAVA website, where it’s available to download for free.

Incorporating the nuanced concerns and issues that FFN providers face into a short-format, children’s coloring book was a unique and exciting challenge for everyone involved. The end result appeals to a wide audience and explains FFN care in a clear, concise way that uplifts and recognizes FFN providers themselves, as well as encourages others to appreciate and advocate for them.

The coloring book is a tool that community members can use to educate others about FFN care, to teach children about the importance of supporting each other, and to show our FFN providers that we love and appreciate them. 

The process that we used to create this coloring book was a beautiful, sometimes messy, but deeply meaningful exercise in the power of community collaboration. Working this way sometimes takes longer and requires more effort, but we’re not in the business of efficiency. We do what we do to rehumanize ourselves and our work, and in that process improve our personal health and the health of our communities.

What is Family, Friend, and Neighbor Care? 

Here at Go Austin/Vamos Austin, one important facet of our community organizing work centers around Early Childhood Education and Family Health. In recent years, our focus has been on an often overlooked sector of Early Childhood Education providers, called Family, Friend, and Neighbor providers. These are relatives, friends, or others in the community who provide child care and often work outside the formal child care system.

FFN Child Care at a Glance

• Over 5 million FFN caregivers in the U.S. look after 11.5 million children, including 6.8 million children ages 0-5. (NSECE 2019)

• One in four children in the U.S. under the age of five is cared for by a grandparent some or all of the time their parent is at work. (ZERO TO THREE 2017).

• 30% of infants and toddlers attend home-based child care as their primary care arrangement compared to just 12% in centers. (NSECE)

• FFN providers are disproportionately likely to be BIPOC, Limited English Proficient (LEP)

• The majority remain unlisted in childcare registries and work without pay.

• For those who do receive pay, the average rate is $3.80/hour.

•  Many –but not all– wish to seek licensure.

FFN providers face a number of challenges, including lack of access to subsidies and professional development, inadequate pay, a lack of recognition for their vital work, and the emotional stress of caring for children every day. Addressing these challenges is crucial to improve the health and quality of life of FFN providers and the communities they serve.