Making Connections and Bringing the Campaign Home
Care Councils
Local Caring Across Generations working groups called “Care Councils” are forming across the country. Care Councils include organizations representing the full range of relationships to care, including older adults, people with disabilities, women’s groups, worker organizations and unions, immigrant rights, faith-based, community and youth organizations. Care Councils will work together to develop shared local and state-based policy platforms and anchor local initiatives to promote the campaign values and policy goals, such as City Council Resolutions and “Care Congresses.”
Download the Local Organizing Toolkit (updated November 8, 2011)
Care Congresses
Care Councils will organize “Care Congresses,” town hall-like events bringing together thousands of people to share experiences and envision a better future together. Care Congresses will reflect the priorities of local Care Councils; some will focus on sharing stories and building the local care movement while others will focus on moving local and state-based policy goals forward. All Care Congresses will include intergenerational learning toward collective action around common values.
Intergenerational Relationships
Caring Across Generations offers an intergenerational lens on all issues of concern for families. Caring Across Generations summer youth programs will support youth to document the oral histories of older adults in their communities, seeing the world through their eyes; and organizing with older adults will include discussions about paid sick days, job creation and immigration. Participants will also work together to engage voters, young and aging, in the values of the campaign and the importance of voting our values.
Civic Engagement
Care Campaign members will work together to mobilize voters to the polls and into the movement to transform care. Community groups in at least five key states will work in focused partnership with unions to reach and register older adult voters in particular, to build organizing committees among older adults and strengthen the civic voice of older adults for progressive change beyond the elections.
Related Initiatives
We are in a moment where many important forms of support for our communities and loved ones are being threatened. Locally, the campaign will work to protect funding and other key supports for workers and people in need of care, while we build the movement to expand what currently exists. Our core policy goals are connected to many ongoing initiatives for care, work-family balance, worker rights and human dignity led by our partners; Caring Across Generations will elevate all of these efforts.
