Update
What Colombia and India Show Us About Treating Care as a Public Good
03. 03. 2026
What if childcare wasn’t your problem to solve alone?
What if childcare wasn’t your problem to solve alone? I recently traveled to Colombia and India to see what it looks like when the government treats care as a public good.
As part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation delegation, I joined leaders from a dozen organizations to learn from local institutions, policymakers, worker unions, and community leaders about care in the Global South.
In the US, childcare is often seen as a personal responsibility, a temporary burden that families must overcome. We also lack the public infrastructure to implement a federal, universal system. Care has no national office and its funding streams are fragmented.
Colombia took a different path. Their National Care System (Sistema Nacional de Cuidados) formalizes care as a public good, with responsibility integrated across multiple public entities that oversee budget and implementation.
I visited a Care Block in Bogotá, which provides free care services for children, elders, and people with disabilities. These centers also provide resources for caregivers, such as education, employment coaching, health care, and personal time for rest and self-care. From an initiative that started in 2020, there are now 27 Care Blocks across the city with the goal of reaching 45 by 2035. The economic benefits of Bogotá’s investment in childcare extend beyond the workers and families who directly utilize it, generating overall returns for the entire economy. In Bogotá, over 30% of women engage in unpaid care work, which the City estimates is equivalent to 13% of its GDP.
Much like Bogotá’s Care Blocks, but on a much larger scale, India’s Integrated Child Development Services delivers care via over 1 million Anganwadi Centers that provide childcare, basic health care, and education services all in one place. Most of their childcare is provided via over 11,000 crèche facilities that provide full-day care in rural and urban areas.
One crèche I visited was a direct response to a community’s need. A high-ranking government official converted his office into an official government-funded crèche that now supports care for infants and toddlers while their mothers are able to work and receive basic health care and counseling, a concrete example of government stepping, institutionally and individually.
I’m not saying Colombia and India’s care systems have everything figured out, but they offer a lot of lessons the US can learn from. Unlike my experience in the US, my travels heightened my belief that government and communities can value care and revere caregivers. I saw how values deeply ingrained in their cultures influenced policies and public investment. In order to achieve substantial policy reform that treats care as a public good and improves social and economic well-being, we must fundamentally alter the public narrative and shift personal mental models to perpetuate the idea that care, including care for caregivers, is both a political and cultural responsibility.