Cambio
Our Value 
More imperative than ever.

How can we do better for and with our Latinx communities?

Since 2020, challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic have disproportionately impacted Latinx communities. Museums, like many other informal learning institutions—zoos, children’s museums, science centers, and other similar organizations—have taken the opportunity to reflect on how to become more relevant and responsive to our Latinx communities.

 

Cambio aimed to provide a foundation for this journey by helping museums cultivate cross-departmental ownership, gather relevant data, and examine their relationship to science, technology, engineering, and math.

credit: Exploratorium
Why This Matters
Advisors Reflect on Cambio’s Impact:
Cambio’s approach to creating a more inclusive STEM and innovation space is an example of leaders leading leaders by facilitating the sharing of ideas, perspectives, inspiration, data, and encouraging collaboration among our groups.  The Hispanic Heritage Foundation and I have greatly benefited from Cambio making sure that we not only look around the room to our peers, but to ourselves, in being more effective in our work.
Jose Antonio Tijerino
Hispanic Heritage Foundation
Cambio is focused on effecting change at the systemic level, so that participating museums can really transform themselves into more inclusive organizations. This hasn’t been done before and we all are looking forward to learning and sharing what Cambio is teaching us.
Salvador Acevedo
Scansion
The Cambio team is doing crucial work by helping informal science educators to recognize science (and STEM) as a set of cultural practices, to learn about strengths that Latinx families bring to STEM, and to enact ways of connecting with Latinx families around STEM ideas and practices in more authentic ways.
Maureen Callanan
University of California at Santa Cruz
Cambio’s strategies to create organizational change is fundamental for the continued engagement of Latinx communities in the STEM fields. In a space where our communities are not proportionally represented, Cambio is a key in making sure our people are welcomed in a culturally sensitive manner, which creates a lasting impact.
Jasmin Zamorano
Hispanic Heritage Foundation
Cohort Experience

Over five years, nineteen informal learning institutions from across the country partnered with Cambio to effect change. They ranged from children’s museums to interactive science centers to zoos. All came to Cambio with a commitment to better serve their local Latinx audiences with culturally relevant, authentic STEM experiences.

Grounded in the three strands of Latinx Communities, Cultural Expressions of STEM, and Shifts in Organizational Practice, participating museums:

  • Met in person to build community and jumpstart learning
  • Held monthly virtual meetings with coaches and faculty to facilitate knowledge-building
  • Devised a locally relevant Strategic Initiative focused on Latinx communities and STEM
  • Convened with Cambio Alumni at a Culminating Summit at the end of the grant period

Credit: The Exploratorium

Cohort Participants
Our partners in change.

Cohort 1

Cohort 2

Cohort 3

Cohort 4

Dedicated to Change
Cambio Participants share their learnings:
[Cambio brought together] an amazing group of dedicated professionals who are not only excellent at living their missions, but are willing to challenge themselves and take risks to bring about a better world for all of us.
Cambio Participant
I have learned that a lot of people are putting a lot of thought, work, and energy into equity work in museums across the country, and that while change is slow, it is happening. I learned that small changes are important and worthwhile and I am not alone.
Cambio Participant
Cambionistas are resilient—and so are their organizations, partners, and communities! We are not alone in doing this important work and must remember to leverage resources and community knowledge.
Cambio Participant
I’ve learned that the time invested in these efforts has immediate and significant payoff—for individuals, for the community, for organizational advancement.
Cambio Participant
Through Cambio I have learned that we all are agents and drivers of change. Change can start from many levels; lasting change needs to start from the ways we lead and model.
Cambio Participant
Impact
A responsive approach.

The museum field isn’t what it was when Cambio started—our work has rippled across the field, with organizations of all stripes, sizes, and geographical locations making long-lasting shifts in how they work with and for their local Latinx communities.

Cambio’s impact is highlighted in the project’s final evaluation report, a summary of the Cambio Summit, and various articles from Hand to Hand, a quarterly publication of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM).

For more about Cambio’s impact on museums across the country, visit our Cambio Stories page or read testimonials from former participants.

So, ready to Cambio?
Cambio