The Kaleidoscope Project

The Kaleidoscope Project is a community-led initiative focused on racially equitable environments that support the social and emotional health of young children. A racially equitable environment is one where children’s social and emotional health are not determined, predictable, or disproportionate by race or place.

We are working for systems change to ensure that children ages 0-8 and their families who have been made most vulnerable by structural racism will have better opportunities to build a solid social emotional foundation. Our long-term goals are to:

1. Create racially equitable environments for children to support their social emotional health and foster relationship building with adults and other children in those spaces.
2. Mobilize a network of organizations and groups working directly with families most impacted by structural racism to create places that strengthen child mental health.
3. Increase and catalyze positive change in Wake County systems that affect racial equity, young child mental health, and the places children spend time.
4. Increase and enable community capacity to create racially equitable places that support the social emotional health of children and their families.

The Kaleidoscope Project uses a community-based approach that shifts the power of philanthropic decision making from the funder to the community. Leading with racial equity means prioritizing strategies that work to improve outcomes specifically for children of color, which will improve outcomes for all children. It means giving special consideration to the wisdom and innovation of people of color to develop the best solutions that are lasting and reach all children. The Kaleidoscope Project interrogates entrenched beliefs about who the true experts are on what communities need, who are best positioned to identify the strengths and challenges of communities, and who should be designing and implementing solutions. Traditional philanthropic and nonprofit systems exclude families who are most harmed by community challenges from meaningful decision-making roles. The need for a deeper focus in advocacy has been identified as a way to strengthen the shift of traditional philanthropic funding processes to a community-led process.

So far, we have improved 25 physical sites that serve families.