Our team will continue our reporting and storytelling on the impact of ARPA-funded anti-poverty programs. This will include reported stories and case studies on how ARPA funds supported interventions to improve a whole host of family economic security and public health, safety, and education issues across the country including:

• Direct cash assistance for families in need
• Maternal health
• Digital literacy
• Food insecurity
• Early care and education
• Job training in care and mental health

We’ll also continue research and reporting projects that explore the future of work, care, well-being, and family justice.

• Reporting grants, fellows, storytelling, and projects exploring innovations in building equitable care infrastructure, from child care to family care
• Business’ role in universal child care and how we can avoid making the same mistakes that we did in relying on employer-provided health care
• Exploring work systems that advance gender equity in the workplace, including the impact of a new SEC proposal for transparency
• Pre-school expulsions and care options for children who struggle in a traditional large-group setting
• The eviction crisis facing Black mothers and children and how it’s fueled, in part, by an inability to access child care
• The systemic causes of unmanageable mental loads for American families, and how women and girls are uniquely vulnerable to finding themselves overwhelmed
• A new Better Work Toolkit and reported pieces on research and best practices for in-person and hybrid work that focuses on gender equity
• The incredible progress made in shifting “family values” to include equality, freedom, and self-actualization, contrary to the narrative that family is “in decline” in the United States
• Expanding our Mission:Visible project to spotlight Black birthing folks choosing not to have children, or to have fewer than they would, due to fears of maternal mortality, financial instability, and other adverse events that disparately affect Black people

We’ll continue to expand both the methods we use to tell stories and our marketing and community-engagement efforts in hopes of reaching audiences who may be less plugged into “mainstream” mass media because this content is inaccessible or because their interests are not represented by these outlets. This includes:

• Multimedia storytelling, through illustrated graphic stories, photography, video, and interactive works.
• More creative social media work targeting specific audiences
• Plugging into established interest-based communities through user-generated content hubs like Reddit and YouTube
• Building a digital community through those sites as well as other semi-closed digital platforms such as Instagram broadcast channels

We’ll continue to support our second-round childcare reporting grant recipients in publishing their stories and produce a second report analyzing the reach and impact of these stories. 

We’ll continue our research, analysis, and technical assistance to support paid family and medical leave policy campaigns federally and in key states, along with providing paid leave implementation support. This will include exploring the potential for cross-movement collaboration around business engagement in paid family and medical leave, gender equity and care, and business accountability for undermining the same set of policies.

For our entertainment-focused work, we’ll continue developing materials, conducting briefings and workshops for creators, and writing about the relationship between pop culture narratives and shifts in culture and policy. We're commissioning research and a video to help illustrate the value of gender, work, family and care stories -- and we're looking for partnerships that will allow us to present at television and film festivals.

We’ll continue our work with BLLx, expanding our collection of user-designed experiments for diverse families seeking to share the load more fairly and update our resources to make it easier to find and feature diverse voices in the national conversation through our Mission:Visible initiative.

Imagining a Wellbeing Economy. Reporting and telling the stories of what work, care, and gender equity could look like in a human-centered economy for Season 5 of the Better Life Lab podcast, with reporting focused on the U.S., but drawing lessons from Wellbeing Economy movement projects around the world.

Main Street—not Wall Street—Economic Indicators. Working with media outlets to identify wellbeing economy indicators that should be covered, with the intention of moving beyond typical economic reporting on the stock market and job numbers that don’t reflect the wealth inequality and daily struggle that most people face managing work and care.

Does the Media Care? Media accountability, education, and training project on care-economy reporting.

What We Talk About When We Talk about Gender. Research, storytelling, and convening project with collaborators to unearth the root of many gendered narratives, and work together to uncover truer, sticker stories that will shift paradigms, norms, and behavior.

Optimizing Non-Fiction Storytelling for Attitudinal Change. Expanding our ethical storytelling work to include discussion of the media psychology and communications studies concepts that illuminate the mechanics of narrative change and the language, tactics, and processes that storytellers can use to optimize for creating lasting attitudinal change in audiences, leading to cultural and policy change.

Voting, Race, Gender, and Family Well-Being. Challenging the common narrative that voting is a way for marginalized people to ensure their well-being, when for certain demographics—such as people of color and queer folks—that is rarely the case. This storytelling project will be solutions-oriented—based on places and people who did breakthrough our existing systems, like Black Voters Matter’s extensive groundwork to flip Georgia in 2020—and focused on how we can improve current democratic methods to ensure work-family well-being and a better overall quality of life for everyone.

With additional funding for our Care Reporting Fellow, Katherine Goldstein, we’d like to expand our work telling the stories of the strategies and tactics at the state and local level that are leading to care movement wins, amplify community voices and stories and help build the care movement’s connective tissue.

Research, Reporting and Writing Fellow Haley Swenson has envisioned a three-year strategy to expand the research capacity at BLLx, with new projects on the mental load, and an inclusive, participatory research project aimed at marginalized communities, with a special focus on single parents.