Co-creating a better future for Napa County’s children and families.
Throughout the program, First 5 Napa Network members co-create solutions to local challenges that face children and families. These solutions do not emerge without structure and support, especially given that these leaders come from different fields, faiths, political beliefs, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and cultural traditions.
F5NN harnesses that diversity and leverages systems thinking, design thinking, and equity frameworks to help members co-create a more inclusive future for Napa County children and families.
To learn more about the frameworks, curriculum, and design of another network similar to the First 5 Napa Network program, download a free copy of Leading Systems Change: A Workbook for Community Practitioners and Funders by Heather McLeod Grant, Adene Sacks, and Jenny Johnston (2019). This book was published by Open Impact and the With/In Collaborative, who also lead the work of the First 5 Napa Network.
Our Impact
By design, F5NN is focused on impacting whole systems that affect children and families in Napa County. Using both survey data and network mapping, we track the impact of the program on the leadership trajectory of individuals, the health of the network, and the subsequent projects and systemic shifts that result in the community. These collaborative projects are used as a proxy to assess the growing capacity of the system to improve itself.
Then below the new HTML table, please reference this book again. This image has been minimally modified for the F5NN, and is based on an image from Leading Systems Change: A Workbook for Community Practitioners and Funders by Grant, Sacks, and Johnston (2019).
- Understand their own strengths and challenges as leaders
- Innovate in the face of ambiguity and complexity
- Work with people who are different from them
- Manage issues of power and equity in their work
- Engage in large-scale community change
- Achieve more together than they could alone
- Create new knowledge and insights together
- Have the connections needed to advance shared goals
- Collective capacity for collaboration
- Connections among leaders working to better the community
- Optimism about the future of the community
This image has been minimally modified for the F5NN, and is based on an image from Leading Systems Change:
A Workbook for Community Practitioners and Funders by Grant, Sacks, and Johnston (2019).
F5NN Commitment to Equity
First 5 Napa Network is centering equity in all of our work and embracing the values of marginalized communities (e.g., immigrant, Latinx, Black, LGBTQ) to heal the many issues that face Napa County’s children and families. We are asking ourselves: How can we re-create our community so that equity is at its center? How do we need to change as leaders to do this? What does this issue have to do with equity, power, and systemic bias? First 5 Napa Network is intentionally recruiting leaders so the Network has balanced representation of gender, race, sexual orientation, and geography within Napa County. We are giving leaders opportunities to have tough conversations about race, power, gender, and other issues of equity because we believe real community change requires this.
How Might We…
Create ways to increase trust between law enforcement and populations with a history of trauma with law enforcement (immigrant/migrant/undocumented/ LGBTQ, etc.)
How Might We…
Create ways for parents and caregivers of young children to better access, engage in and benefit from services that are currently available to them (LGBTQ families).
How Might We…
Create ways to see, face and address inequity in Napa County (wine industry)?
