Children’s Rights Innovation Fund
Client
Sectors
Philanthropy
Social Justice
Youth
Services
Brand refresh
Communications strategy
The Children's Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF) is a grantmaker in the global children's rights field that builds power with youth activists and their allies.
After CRIF’s successful first few years, their team wanted to refresh their initial brand and ground it more deeply in their political worldview of shifting power to children and youth activists in the Global South. While we were working with CRIF, their organization merged with Purposeful, which is a feminist hub for girls' activism rooted in Africa and working all around the world. Now, CRIF is a part of Purposeful — or as they say, a project with Purposeful — which further grounds their work in supporting the activism of girls and young people worldwide.
LeBlanc (& co.) Communications worked with the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund to refresh both their communications strategy and visual branding. Their goal was to align their brand with their values-aligned approach to philanthropy.
The Children's Rights Innovation Fund is a grantmaking fund and donor-learning community that works to build power with children and youth activists to transform the global children's rights field by confronting systemic oppressions and strengthening youth-led efforts for change. Their approach includes participatory grantmaking, driving narrative change, strengthening accountability to youth, and fostering a learning community among funders and youth activists.
In the field of global children’s rights, the right messaging and visuals can depict children and youth as the leaders that they are — but the wrong messaging and visuals can play into unequal power dynamics. We approached this work with intention and by listening to CRIF's global team.
Firstly, we engaged CRIF in a comprehensive strategy and research phase. We worked with them to write their Communications Strategy, co-create their Message Guide, and prepare for the design phase of the project. Their team needed a strategy that could support their multifaceted needs such as grantmaking, convening, and field building. Most importantly, CRIF wanted to ensure that their communications work was in line with their approach to shifting power in grantmaking.
After the strategy phase, we embarked on the design work. CRIF needed a visual refresh rather than a full rebrand. While their logo and primary colour scheme already suited their needs, CRIF needed an updated ‘look and feel’ that could portray their transformative, power-shifting approach to children’s rights grantmaking. Their goal was to create a brand that could communicate the values behind their work and show children and youth as the leaders in their own stories. They asked for a collage-focused brand, because collage is an impactful tool for “world building” and showcasing powerful, visual narratives. Many of the digital collage images integrated into the brand were created by illustrator Andy Valdor for a special project led by CRIF, creating a storybook to enable donors to learn about shifting power in philanthropy.
Storybook Design
The ‘Tiny Cave and the Magnificent Creatures’ storybook was written by CRIF employee, Juhi Jha. The storybook was illustrated by Andy Valdor. LeBlanc (& co.) Communications typeset the book for print and supported the project with communications strategy. LeBlanc (& co.) Communications also extended the Tiny Cave world into CRIF’s visual brand through creating brand standards that incorporated the illustrations done for Tiny Cave.
Many of the collage images integrated into the brand were created by illustrator Andy Valdor for a storybook created by CRIF called ‘Tiny Cave and the Magnificent Creatures’ to enable donors to learn about shifting power in global children’s rights philanthropy.
About the Book
The CRIF team wrote the following information to describe their goals in creating the storybook:
"The Children’s Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF) created this book to tell a story about our experiments with participatory grantmaking with youth across various regions around the world. For years, whenever our team spent time with child and youth activists and heard their dreams for change, we always saw how expansive, joyful, and creative their dreams were. But whenever we attempted to turn those creative conversations into a “project” or “plan — or worse yet, when we introduced the idea of grants and funding — the space for possibilities shrank, as the youth activists worked to “get it right” and to be “professional”.
Whenever this happened, we were saddened by the narrowing of possibilities, as we knew that “we” — those of us who call ourselves donors, advocates, program officers, or professionals in the philanthropy space — through our programs, funding, and advocacy, may be relegating young people’s dreams and work to these tiny caves. That we had created the tiniest caves for their work to exist, holding them back. Our team decided to tell the story of this experience by creating a storybook called The Tiny Cave and the Magnificent Creatures. This book, created in the format most recognizable to children, is our effort to show the world we would like to build — together with young folks."
