What happens when you bring home-based child care leaders from nine countries into one room for two days?

In July 2025, we found out. The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Aspen Ascend Impact Fund, hosted the first global learning convening for home-based child care in Dallas. Fifteen educators, program leaders, and policy experts came from Bangladesh, Chad, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam, and the United States. We had the privilege of designing and facilitating the process.

Here’s what they taught each other, and what it taught us about convening.

The same job, in a different country

Home-based child care looks different in a rural Ecuadorian village, a Vietnamese industrial zone, a refugee community on the Chad–Sudan border, and a family child care home in Maryland. But the core questions were strikingly similar: How do we get this work recognized? How do we pay caregivers fairly? How do we set quality standards that fit real conditions?

One example stayed with everyone. When South Africa’s government proposed safety standards that would have required floors in caregivers’ homes, SmartStart pushed back. Many villages providing quality care don’t have them. That tension, between raising quality and respecting the realities of communities living in poverty, resonated with leaders from very different places.

As one participant put it, it felt as though everyone in the room had their same job in another country.

Providers make the conversation real

The convening was unusual because it centered home-based educators themselves, not just the policy experts who study them. Their stories grounded every discussion: a Maryland educator who fought for home-based care to be included in state funding after it was left out, and Kenyan standards that were developed starting with educators.

Again and again, someone asked: how do we shift power to the providers? It’s a question that applies just as much in New Orleans as in Nairobi.

Good data and good stories need each other

Because home-based care is everywhere and often invisible, its impact is hard to measure. Leaders wanted better data on the workforce behind the workforce, and on what home-based care contributes to children’s learning, health, and local economies. They also recognized that numbers alone won’t move policymakers. Storytelling and testimony, paired with data, build the case.

A global movement is within reach

By the end of two days, the group had surfaced a shared advocacy agenda: helping policymakers understand home-based care, creating livable pay for educators, and securing government investment. Nurture First and SmartStart tested a draft model for a global coalition with the group. Participants left with a mantra they created themselves: Community, Connection, Commitment.

What it taught us about convening

We brought three design choices to this work that we now carry into every convening.

Start with understanding, not an agenda. Before anyone met, we interviewed each participant about their work and relationships. That grounding let us set a shared purpose for a group spread across 14 time zones.

Let participants build the agenda. Over three virtual meetings, held at 6:30 a.m. in California and 8:30 p.m. in Vietnam, participants named their own priorities and shaped the two days. We chose a simple shared slide deck over heavier collaboration tools so everyone could take part, whatever their bandwidth.

Design for relationships. Peer consulting let leaders bring a sticky problem to colleagues for advice. Over dinner, a “15 Toasts” exercise asked, “Whose legacy are you carrying forward in your work?” By the second day, colleagues had become a community. Every participant left with at least one relationship they planned to keep.

Dr. Joan Lombardi, who curated the participants, thanked us afterward for the thoughtful preparation and the cross-border discussions, and for the hope in the room. Hope is the right word. In a moment when the care sector is under strain almost everywhere, the convening was a reminder that no one has to figure this out alone.

Read more: NAFCC’s convening report | Our case study