The Care Block Implementation Guide
In 2020, the city of Bogotá launched the Manzanas del Cuidado, or Care Blocks—a pioneering built-environment model that reorganizes services around the needs of caregivers and those they care for. In 2024, with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), CHANGE began working with Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr and her team at Freetown City Council (FCC) to transfer and adapt the model to Sierra Leone—creating Africa’s first Care Block.
As Care Blocks gain attention from municipal leaders around the world—as a feminist innovation, a human capital investment, and an approach to more sustainable urbanism—CHANGE’s work in West Africa has given us a unique opportunity to explore a critical question: How can this innovation travel, and what does it take to make it work in a new context?
In response to these questions, we have worked with Diana Rodríguez-Franco, one of the original masterminds behind Bogotá’s innovation and current Special Adviser on Gender and Diversity to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, to develop the Care Block Implementation Guide—a practical tool designed to help urban practitioners move from “I want a Care Block” to “This is how we do it here.”
What is a Care Block?
A Care Block is a defined area of a city where caregivers and their families can access essential services in one place, close to home.
The model coordinates an anchor building, complementary facilities, and public space within a neighbourhood to bring three core principles—or “building blocks”—to life: simultaneity, proximity, and flexibility. In a Care Block, services are available at the same time, delivered close to where caregivers live, and offered in ways that adapt to their needs and schedules—all while making creative use of existing municipal infrastructure. Together, these principles reduce the time and distance caregivers spend navigating services, easing time poverty and expanding access for caregivers and those they care for.
Care Blocks do more than bring together essential services for children, older adults, and people living with disabilities; they also provide professional, educational, and wellbeing support for caregivers themselves in the same place and at the same time. In doing so, the model addresses a longstanding gap in welfare systems: while support has traditionally focused on those receiving care, it has too often overlooked the people providing it—usually women, whose unpaid and often invisible labour can come at the expense of their own wellbeing, time, and opportunities.
Ultimately, the Care Block model aims to transform how cities value, support, and share care. It does so in three ways: recognising the essential contribution of caregivers by bringing opportunities closer to them; reducing caregiver time poverty by shortening the journeys between essential destinations; and redistributing unpaid care by working with men, families, and communities to challenge assumptions about who provides care and promote a more equitable sharing of care across households, communities, and society.
About the guide
The Care Block Implementation Guide offers tangible advice for those working within the day-to-day realities of municipal governments. It reflects CHANGE’s interpretation and synthesis of lessons from Bogotá’s experience designing, implementing, and scaling Care Blocks, as well as from Freetown’s experience adapting the approach to its own context.
Instead of reproducing Bogotá’s model piece by piece, the guide translates these experiences into principles, questions, and practical guidance that can be relevant and adaptable across different city contexts—reflecting the considerations that emerge as city leaders translate ideas around care into policy and implementation.
The Guide walks through what care means in practice, how Care Blocks function on the ground, and what it takes to begin building one. From identifying political entry points and convening the right actors, to mapping services, rethinking infrastructure, and designing coordination mechanisms, each tool invites cities to assess their own starting point and move forward from there.
What emerges is not a fixed solution, but a flexible approach. One that allows municipal governments to start with what they have, adjust what already exists, and progressively build toward a more integrated approach to care.
The guide is designed for local government policymakers and service providers, as well as urban researchers, practitioners, and networks exploring new approaches to urban policy and service delivery. It is also intended for feminist, gender equality, and care organizations, alongside think tanks, academic institutions, NGOs, international organizations, and funders working with cities on urban development, care, and gender equality.
What’s Inside?
The guide takes readers from why care matters, to how the Care Block model works and, what it takes to put it into practice in a new city.
Throughout the guide, you will find guiding questions to help municipal policymakers and urban practitioners assess their starting point and navigate key decisions. Checklists and decision tools help structure thinking, identify priorities, and support informed choices, while concrete examples from Bogotá and Freetown illustrate how the Care Block model can be adapted and implemented in different contexts.
The Guide in Action
Now, CHANGE is bringing the Guide to life through participatory co-design workshops. These creative and joyful workshops translate the Care Block concept into a concrete, context-specific roadmap, grounded in existing strategies, governance structures, infrastructure, and the priorities of caregivers and other local stakeholders. Our aim is to understand how caregivers navigate their neighbourhoods, uncovering the drivers of time poverty and barriers to accessing essential services. We then bring local actors together to adapt the core principles of the Care Block model to their context—identifying challenges and solutions, connecting the approach to existing policies and strategies, and building the partnerships needed to sustainably establish and grow Care Blocks in a new context.
The result is a practical roadmap for municipal leaders that identifies a preferred site and service mix, establishes a cross-departmental team, develops a local lexicon for care, and sets out clear next steps for budgeting and fundraising.
CHANGE’s work translating this model to new contexts started in Freetown (Sierra Leone). In 2026, in collaboration with Equimundo, the Centre for Masculinities, through the MenCare Cities initiative, and Publica, these workshops took place in Greater Manchester (United Kingdom) and Melbourne (Australia).
With continued support from IDRC, alongside the Judith Neilson Foundation, we will continue this work in 2027 in Nairobi (Kenya) and Quezon City (Philippines), building the evidence and practice needed to help cities adapt the Care Block model to their own realities.
Explore our ongoing work here:
Authors
Eloisa Cardona
Project Manager, CHANGE
Eloisa is a project manager for the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE), and has been since 2024. Previously, she worked at Bogotá’s Secretariat for Women’s Affairs, where she contributed to the city’s Care System and broader equity policies, including efforts to address gender-based violence and expand opportunities for women. Eloisa has also consulted for UN Women Colombia, supporting the use of gender-sensitive budgeting and planning tools for local governments across the country.
Eloisa holds a degree in International Relations and a MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics.
Leslie Crosdale
Co-Executive Director
Leslie (she/her) is Co-Executive Director of the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE). She joined the network secretariat in 2023, and since then has been with municipal policy teams to reshape urban systems—from public space to public policy—so women, girls, and gender-diverse communities can move safely and live fully in their cities.
Previously, Leslie worked at the Greater London Authority (GLA), as part of the International Relations team. Before joining the GLA, Leslie was an Advocacy and Communications Officer at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), where she helped develop international advocacy campaigns and strategies to raise awareness of major humanitarian emergencies in global forums.
She holds a BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an MSc in Urban Development Planning from the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU) at University College London.
Holly Milburn-Smith
Co-Executive Director
Holly Milburn-Smith (she/her) is a Co-Executive Director of the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity. She joined CHANGE in 2021 as a member of the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs in the City of Los Angeles. Prior to joining the Mayor’s team, Holly managed community-based development programs internationally and throughout the U.S. Some of her favorite professional experiences include working with children of incarcerated parents in New York state prisons, supporting research on gender-based violence in South Africa, developing an educational partnership serving children with disabilities in Haiti, and leading workforce development programs for young people impacted by the criminal justice system in Chicago.
Holly received a B.A. from Transylvania University in her home state of Kentucky. She earned a Master of Public Policy and a Certificate in Public Financial Management from the University of Southern California, where she completed research for the TIME’S UP Foundation and the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation. Holly is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and, in 2022, was recognized by the Aspen Institute as a Rising Leader in Foreign Policy. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.
Diana Rodríguez Franco
Special Advisor on Gender and Diversity to the President of the IADB
Diana is the Special Advisor on Gender and Diversity to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank. Diana has nearly 20 years of experience in gender equality and human rights. She combines a robust academic foundation in sociology, economics, and law with practical experience to deliver transformative social change. She offers a proven track record in creating and driving women’s rights and social justice initiatives in both governmental and non-governmental contexts in Latin America.
As the former Secretary for Women’s Affairs in the city of Bogota from 2020 to 2023, Diana conceived and implemented innovative and internationally awarded public policies to address the unpaid care burden (notably the “Care Blocks”), close gaps in employment opportunities, and respond to gender-based violence, in addition to mainstreaming a gender perspective throughout government and partnering with private sector stakeholders. Prior to that role, Diana was Deputy Director of Dejusticia (Center for Law, Justice, and Society), a non-profit research center that promotes human rights and the social rule of law in Colombia and Latin America, where she oversaw the divisions of economic justice, environmental justice, and international human rights.
Diana holds a PhD and Master’s degree in Sociology from Northwestern University and an Economics and Law (Juris Doctor) degree from Universidad de Los Andres in Bogota. Diana sits on the Advisory Council of CHANGE.
Cities: Bogotá, Freetown, Melbourne
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