From Play to Policy: Imagine Cincinnati earns an Interact for Health grant
We’re thrilled to announce that Imagine Cincinnati was chosen as one of five organizations to receive funding through Interact for Health’s Advocacy Capacity Building grant. A team of dedicated parents and caregivers contributed their skills in grant writing, teaching, and more to help us develop our vision for the next season of our organization’s relational work.
With this funding, we’ll receive dedicated time and coaching in a cohort-based model that aims to support nonprofit organizations to strengthen their organizational culture, mindsets, and practices for local policy and advocacy efforts focused on the vital conditions for health and well-being — the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age, and the wider set of forces and systems that shape our daily lives.
Imagine Cincinnati began almost 3 years ago as a group of passionate parents and caregivers—educators, therapists, and community builders—drawn together by a shared realization: parenting today is often unbearably lonely and overwhelming. We believe it doesn’t have to be this way. We refuse to let politics, broken systems, or a culture of individualism define what’s possible for us.
Instead, we’re reimagining the spaces and communities our children—and we ourselves—need to flourish. Our community-led advocacy vision includes 3 initial focus areas that we’ll explore with the support of our coaches at Transforming Change:
1. Protecting Title I and Strengthening Public Schools as Wellness Hubs
We’re organizing parents to defend and expand access to school-based mental health care, inclusive curriculum, IEP supports, free meals, and wraparound care—ensuring schools remain neighborhood lifelines.
2. Investing in Inclusive, Healing Third Spaces for Outdoor Connection
Our gardens are more than green spaces—they’re low-barrier mental health interventions. We advocate for public investment in outdoor environments that foster play, healing, and belonging. Nature also creates space for connection across language, culture, and faith—something our neighborhoods need more than ever.
3. Advancing Early Literacy and School Readiness for All
Caregivers in our network want their children to thrive as readers and storytellers, but face barriers like unaffordable preschool and limited speech services. We’re raising caregiver voices around investment in pre-literacy, speech development, and universal pre-K. Early reading skills grow best through play and conversation—environments every child deserves.
The 12-month cohort experience that began in September, is led by Robin Wright-Pierce, MPA, Chief Executive Officer and Rev. Nelson Pierce Jr., Chief Political Strategist of Transforming Change, and will include both individual and group coaching, training, strategy development, and support. Through this process, we’ll develop a Guidance Team of staff and paid volunteers to help put our learning into practice in the years to come. We’re already learning so much.
“Advocacy allows nonprofit organizations to go beyond treating the symptoms of societal problems and instead move toward addressing the root causes. By the end of the cohort, they will have developed robust, actionable, and community-centered policy agendas and strategies for change.” - Robin Wright-Pierce
The five organizations selected for funding will each receive $40,000 to address inequities, such as economic injustice, systemic racism, and other forms of marginalization that shape the experiences of some groups of people, leading to wide disparities between different places and the health of the people who live in them.
Congratulations to all the selected organizations, and thank you to the incredible team at Interact for Health. We’re thrilled to partner with you all in the work ahead:
Imagine Cincinnati: From Play to Policy: Turning Neighborhood Care into Advocacy for Low-Income Families
Imagine Cincinnati is rethinking parenting by creating supportive, connected spaces that nurture early learning, mental health, and community belonging.
Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses: Community Leadership & Civic Muscle: From Participation to Power
Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses is evolving its Community Ambassador Program into a resident-driven policy advocacy initiative, aiming to advance housing stability, safety, and equity in Cincinnati’s West End.
Cincinnati Parent Empowerment Network (CPEN): Amplified — Educational Equity, Advocacy, and Policy Change
The Cincinnati Parent Empowerment Network is shifting its focus toward parent-led policy advocacy to drive sustainable, long-term educational reform in Hamilton County’s five lowest-performing school districts.
Black Women Cultivating Change: Building Culturally Responsive Black Mental Health Advocacy
Black Women Cultivating Change is working to champion mental health equity for the Black community in Greater Cincinnati through community-driven policy advocacy.
Kentucky Refugee Ministries: Northern Kentucky Language Access Advocacy Kentucky Refugee Ministries – Covington is launching a policy strategy to improve language access across Northern Kentucky, ensuring refugees and other displaced individuals can equitably navigate essential services like healthcare, education, and public benefits.
About Interact for Health
Interact for Health works to ensure that people in our region have a just opportunity to live their healthiest lives, regardless of who they are or where they live. We advance health justice through grantmaking, collaboration, learning, convening, and engagement. Interact for Health is an independent foundation that works in 20 counties in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. More information is available at www.interactforhealth.org.
