All Children Thrive

The Challenge

All Children Thrive is a new equity-focused, community-driven initiative to support and transform the health and well-being of children and young people across the state of California. The initiative recruits community stakeholders and city officials to formally join the ACT learning community and to co-design, implement, and evaluate groundbreaking prevention and intervention strategies to give all children the opportunity to thrive. Public Health Advocates hired Civilian to provide marketing communications services to drive awareness of and participation in the program.

Our Approach

Civilian had to inspire confidence, trust, and engagement from community stakeholders and city officials who are often jaded of this type of broad and ambitious initiative, which they have seen fail so many times before. Civilian conducted in-depth audience research and developed the overarching strategy to clearly communicate the benefits of addressing childhood trauma holistically and equitably, rather than only addressing a limited number of traumas in inequitable ways––and in doing so, to inspire hope that change can occur when the communities that are most affected are active participants in the transformation process. This holistic and equitable approach includes strengthening economic supports for children and families; creating protective environments; and promoting healthy child development, youth development and civic engagement, and access to safe and stable housing.

We developed an ACT brand and logo to unify a broad range of activities, policies, programs, and resources––a brand to speak to children and young people’s health and well-being with one clear and cohesive voice. We conducted focus groups to test the logo, message, and the creative assets among different audiences. Civilian then developed and produced a suite of materials to be used for city and community outreach, including a 50-page toolkit, a technical assistance document, a PowerPoint presentation, a fact sheet, FAQs, a social media toolkit, a brand values document, and a nine-minute animated video.

The Results

The new ACT brand launched in September 2020 via a webinar attended by 108 city officials and community-based organizations. Civilian has received high praise and approval from CDPH and the ACT Equity Advisory Group, which has 30 members from agencies across the state for thorough audience research and strategies. The new logo and branded materials have recently been deployed for city and community outreach. The ACT initiative is more important now than ever, as the pandemic has shed additional light on just how drastic the disparities are for children of different backgrounds, particularly those who have experienced childhood or community trauma.