Family-Friendly Organizing

Family-friendly organizing is methods of collective action that acknowledge the importance of children and their guardians to our communities and accommodate their needs. Family-friendly organizing sees children not as an obstacle to be overcome but important members of our community.

It starts at the beginning

Family-friendly organizing doesn't include childcare as an afterthought; it makes the needs of children and families central to the organizing of events. Children aren't miniature adults; they are whole human beings with their own unique needs -- and these needs affect everything from where your event takes place to how long your event lasts to how much your event costs.

It knows kids need to be safe

Children need supervision to help them avoid dangerous activities and mediate disputes, but safety also means meeting their needs:  access to food & drink, and access to their guardians. Trusted adults are crucial to children's emotional well-being, and events that require children be separated from their guardians for more than two hours can cause them distress.

How can DCCC help you?

The DC Childcare Collective (DCCC) was founded on the belief that childcare is a crucial issue of accessibility. When our radical organizing spaces fail to offer childcare, we unwittingly exclude the mothers, women of color, and people from low-income backgrounds who are critical leaders of our movements. DCCC is committed to removing that barrier by offering volunteer childcare as an act of political solidarity. We do this by sending childcare volunteers to meetings and other events where they can look out for and have fun with children while their guardians do the important work of community organizing nearby. 

We are also mindful that our current membership is predominantly white and middle-class, with the privilege to be able to do childcare on a volunteer basis, and that we don't want to undercut opportunities for paid childcare providers and perpetuate economic harm. To that end, we connect organizations that have the budget to pay for childcare with paid childcare providers.