Learning Tracks
How might we cross-pollinate the strategies, care models, and radical dreams our communities are growing, and move them toward the futures we know are possible?
This year’s National Community Leadership Summit, Cross-Pollinating Solutions: Moving our Radical Dreams Forward, is an opportunity to deepen community-centered leadership principles and systems-change strategies that advance health, educational, and relational equity for children and families.
Rooted in interdependence, transformative healing, and collective care, we’ll explore how building and expanding our beloved community, and carrying its lessons across boundaries, can be a sustainable, joyful, and powerful way to advance child, family, and community wellbeing.
Join us as we exchange the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to resist unjust systems and create community-led change in relational health, birth justice, education, food systems, and beyond.
Program
This two-day summit brings together changemakers, community leaders, and advocates from across the country who are dedicated to ensuring that children and families have equitable access to the tools and resources they need to thrive.
Key program offerings include:
Keynote Speakers & Plenaries
Concurrent Sessions with Interactive Panel Discussions & Workshop Offerings
Lightning Talks Featuring Community Leaders & Data Storytellers
Community Sharing & Networking Opportunities
Learning Tracks
The 2026 program offers four interconnected learning tracks, each exploring interdisciplinary collaboration, community-led policy and advocacy, and the democratization of data for social impact. Sessions move across tracks, and we encourage you to follow the questions and approaches most alive in your own work.
Birth Justice
This track offers cross-sector dialogue and skill-building sessions focused on dismantling systemic barriers, supporting innovative care models, and advancing birth justice through policy and practice. Special focus on culturally affirming, anti-racist models that center birthing people and families of color.
Education
This track offers interactive sessions on collective leadership, power-sharing, and coalition-building strategies that promote sustainable, community-driven solutions in education and care. Special focus on democratizing data through data sovereignty strategies and participatory action research methods.
Community Food Systems
This track provides sessions sharing frameworks, strategies, and case studies to advance just, community-led food systems. Attendees learn from local leaders working to develop equitable and resilient local food systems through community-led policy and advocacy, mobilizing communities through coalition building, and leveraging interdisciplinary collaboration for strategic change.
Relational Health
This track centers attachment, dyadic care, mental and emotional wellbeing, and the relational fabric that holds children, families, and communities. Sessions explore innovative care models, including Dyad Group Care, that integrate community wisdom and interdisciplinary strategies to improve childhood and family health, mental health, and overall thriving. Through panel discussions, research presentations, and interactive labs, the track cultivates strategies for sustainability, builds cross-sector capacity, and strengthens collective action grounded in dignity and connection.
Continuing Education Credits:
Vital Village Networks, in joint providership with Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Center for Continuing Education, offers continuing education credit for the 2026 National Community Leadership Summit. Credit types include CME, CEU, CERPs, and professional development points (PDP) for educators.