ENGAGED PARENT PROGRAM
African diaspora families face a diversity of challenges that extend beyond the home, including education, health, housing, and employment - to name a few. Recognizing the various challenges families face, our program enables parents to become more involved in their communities and in their children's schools. The Engaged Parent Program (EPP) provides participants with knowledge, skills, and motivation to take part in decision-making in their cities and states and to make positive changes in society. African diaspora women of all backgrounds are eager to take advantage of opportunities to act on their interests and have a direct impact on their communities. EPP is an avenue for action and a vehicle for such involvement because it's based on best practices, research, and community leaders' guidance.
PROGRAM STRATEGIES
Engaged Parent Program offers the following topics:
Public Policy and Framing
African diaspora women participate in variety of institutions in Minnesota, such as schools,
trade unions, health care. These women have human capital that can be tapped into in order to
affect public policies. In this program participants learn the policymaking process as well as how
to influence and monitor public policy which in turns develops democratic values and feelings of
political efficacy in its participants.
Organizing Skill
Community organizing is all about people, power, and change – it starts with people and
relationships, is focused on shifting power, and aims to create lasting change. We coach the
participants how to strategize turning their resources into the power they need to make the
change they desire.
Walid (Parent) Leadership
Community organizing and walid leadership are central to achieving meaningful changes,
including improving the learning, development, and health of children and creating an
institutional reform within school districts and states. In this period of a global pandemic,
unemployment and racial justice uprising, the stakes are even higher for parents, who are often
excluded from the decision-making process about changes happening in the school system today.
In this program we discuss school-to-prison pipeline and that being in school is not the same as
learning. They also learn about budgets, policy, and laws that effect children.
Voter Education & Civic Literacy Training
Voting is imperative to our democracy; it is the most direct way eligible individuals can
peacefully express their political preferences.
Through our Voter Education programs, we are able to connect first-time voters with essential
information like how and where to vote, voter rights and responsibilities, candidates and issues
on the ballot, the recognition of voter disenfranchisement, and primary and caucusing processes.