About
WeVision EarlyEd
WeVision EarlyEd, an initiative of the Bainum Family Foundation, is dedicated to transforming the U.S. child care system to better meet the needs of those it serves — families with young children and early childhood professionals. WeVision EarlyEd has identified their shared challenges and a common vision for an ideal system and elevated core mindset shifts needed to transform child care. Through its Solutions Lab sites, WeVision EarlyEd is demonstrating that the ideal child care is possible.
WeVision EarlyEd supports families, early childhood education professionals, and other advocates working to generate effective and practical solutions that make the ideal vision of child care system in America real.
The ideal child care system:
- Focuses on what young children need to grow and develop
- Is viewed as a public good and supported by appropriate federal and local funding
- Provides clear, affordable child care options for all families
- Guarantees consistent, predictable quality with appropriately scaled regulations
- Shares decision-making and governance with families, practitioners, and government
What is WeVision EarlyEd?
WeVision EarlyEd is an initiative dedicated to transforming the U.S. child care system to better meet the needs of those it serves — families with young children and early childhood professionals.
The initiative has three main components:
Data from Proximity Experts: To better understand current pain points and define the ideal child care system.
Core Mindset Shifts: To replace outdated mindsets with transformative ones about what child care is, who should be served, who should pay, how we should define quality, and how decisions should be made. This shift aims to pave the way for more effective and practical child care policies.
Solutions Lab Sites: To demonstrate, in a tangible way, that the ideal child care system as defined by proximity experts can be made real — right now. Their ideal is possible.
Although many other interrelated systems and services play a role in supporting child development and family well-being, WeVision EarlyEd is explicitly — and intentionally — focused only on the child care system.
Who is the Bainum Family Foundation?
The Bainum Family Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., has been supporting the well-being of children and families across the country for more than 50 years. In the last decade, we have invested deeply in early childhood — the critical period from birth to age 5, that shapes a child’s learning, behavior, and health for life.
As part of this work, in late 2021, we set out on a journey to do something that families with young children and early childhood experts in America have asked for: get child care right. Through this process, we learned that while communities have unique contexts and circumstances, the pain points around child care and the visions for an ideal child care system are the same at the core.
We know we cannot merely name the issues, put Band-Aids on the problems, and hope transformative change magically happens. As a committed early childhood funder, we have a much broader responsibility to support systems change and demonstrate that the ideal child care is possible.
During our first decade in the early childhood space, we made investments of more than $40 million in D.C. alone. In July 2024, we made a historic investment — a five-year, $100 million commitment to early childhood nationally. This funding will provide grantees and partners with the stability they need to meet the needs of young children and their families while advancing transformative narratives and policy solutions to pave the way toward a more equitable and effective child care system across the country.