Involving Parents and the Community

The overall goal of the Children First Initiative is to provide a focal point for a community's desire to organize and build upon its capacity to support the healthy development and effective early and elementary education of its youngest children. The Memorial Fund continues to believe that the active involvement of parents and a caring community are known predictors of positive education and life outcomes for children.

In 1994, 14 Connecticut cities were identified as the pool of communities eligible to apply for Children First planning grants. These communities were selected based on their identification as priority school districts by the Connecticut Department of Education. The communities are so designated because of certain measures of need, such as the number of students receiving free and reduced-price lunches, and various indicators of poor academic performance.

In November 1994, 10-month planning grants were awarded to eight of the 14 communities. The eight communities included Danbury, Hartford, Meriden, Middletown, New London, Norwalk, Norwich and Windham.

During the planning phase, the communities used multiple approaches to initiate conversations about each community's vision for its children, to inventory resources and assess needs, and to frame an approach for collaborative action. Information-gathering activities included surveys, focus groups, and less traditional methods, such as a children's fair and an information hotline. One community conducted over 1,100 door-to-door surveys and 18 focus groups, including groups with children, who were asked to draw or write about what good things they wanted to see for themselves and their peers.

During the planning period, the Memorial Fund provided technical assistance in such areas as team building, community organizing, building constituencies for change, parent engagement, and managing the challenges of collaboration in an era of block grants and other "reforms." In addition, consultant support was provided to each community in the areas of strategic planning and process facilitation.

Early in the planning phase, the Memorial Fund staff shared the selection criteria with each community:

Implementation in Seven Cities

The Memorial Fund did not stipulate the types of services or programs that cities could include in their implementation applications. The programs were to be defined by each community as a result of their own experiences during the planning period. The Memorial Fund was nonprescriptive about the types of programs undertaken by the cities, but highly prescriptive when it came to listening to authentic community voices.

In 1995 the Memorial Fund awarded implementation grants to Danbury, Hartford, Meriden and Windham. The Board of Trustees also awarded incentive grants to Middletown, New London, Norwalk and Norwich. Based on the content of the cities' plans, the implementation grants have funded community planning, community organizing, leadership development, early childhood programs, community development projects, transition to school programs, evaluation, community awareness/strategic use of information, and the management of local initiatives. Technical assistance and ongoing evaluation reports have been valuable tools for participating communities.

As clearly and succinctly stated by the Memorial Fund's lead trustee, "the role of the Memorial Fund is to help mediate how people interact - to create a place and a set of expectations that allow the exchange of human gifts to flourish." In the design and implementation of the community engagement initiative, Children First, the Memorial Fund experienced first-hand the abundance of community "gifts" willingly and generously bestowed upon all children.

After five years of the Children First Initiative (CFI), the work entered a new phase. Each CFI community developed a two-year Legacy phase designed to secure and enhance gains it has made on behalf of children. Communities have identified the "space" to talk about children and have gathered many of the tools needed to act on systemic and programmatic issues of greatest importance to their children. The Memorial Fund is awed by the boundless capacity of communities to care, to love their children, and to move forward when challenged not just by outside forces, but by their own processes of self-reflection and thoughtful action.

The following pages provide descriptions of some of the more successful projects undertaken as part of the Children First Initiative. These project descriptions are organized according to the four major program areas: Family Support; Parent Engagement and Leadership; Family Literacy; and Transition from Community to School.

Anyone interested in additional information on the Memorial Fund or the Children First Initiative should contact the Memorial Fund at:

William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund
One Hamden Center, Suite 2B
2319 Whitney Avenue
Hamden, CT 06518
(203) 230-3330
www.wcgmf.org