Creating Parent Advocates in Mission Promise

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By Liz Cortez and Ada Freund, Mission Promise Neighborhood | San Francisco, CA

The Mission district of San Francisco is a historically vibrant immigrant community. At the present time, many of our Latinx families are striving to stay and thrive in the neighborhood and in San Francisco. The pressures of displacement and poverty are impacting family wellness and academic success. 

Through Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN), a collective impact initiative composed of many partner organizations, we are creating positive outcomes for our children, youth, and families through evidence-based programming and leadership development that empowers our community to advocate for the needs of their families and our community. In collaboration with Abriendo Puertas, and many local organizations, we are weaving a strong social fabric to support and nurture our community. We are building economic prosperity, family wellness, and laying pathways for academic success from cradle to college to career. Through culturally relevant family engagement, critical services, and leadership development and advocacy, we are strengthening our community from the ground up, ensuring that families are partners in the process. 

Organizations such as Abriendo Puertas have been critical to us in this process. The AP-OD institutes and curriculum gave us the structure and resources to inform, guide, and inspire our community to take ownership of our school readiness efforts. Our facilitators, which include local parents, work to empower families to learn about healthy child development, school readiness, and how to advocate for their various needs.

MPN began implementing in 2013, and some of our partners were offering Abriendo Puertas before MPN got started. In 2017, we began growing the number of organizations that offer Abriendo Puertas and created a collective strategy for working together to double the amount of families that access the program. For the last three years, we have watched in awe as partnering organizations have built more and more robust programming around Abriendo Puertas. An example of one such program is Tandem’s Todas Unidas project, in which four AP-OD-trained parents originally from the Literacy Champions program began to offer Abriendo Puertas for parents with children up to five years old. We are inspired to see how parents within our community can support and empower each other from within.

As one of our AP-OD facilitators, Margarita, shared, “With our own cultures and values we can help our children reach their goals. Also, as a Latina mother it is important to support my Latino community.” Another recently trained parent facilitator, Rosario, told us, “I have four children ranging from two years old to 14. I am a very busy mom. But AP-OD has changed my life. I have made many new friends, and most importantly, what I have learned I can share with my community.” 

Last year we heard from families that they wanted to learn more about advocacy opportunities and wondered what was next after an Abriendo Puertas series. As part of our partner collective Abriendo Puertas work, we are building a pathway to leadership development and advocacy opportunities by connecting parents to additional opportunities after they finish a series. The Abriendo Puertas curriculum is a great fit for our community because it encourages parents to advocate for what they need. Another parent facilitator, Albertina, shared that the AP-OD “program teaches us how to advocate for our children...helping to open doors for school success.”  Ultimately, our goal is that families are decision-makers in the institutions and systems that affect their lives.

Through relationships, sustained effort, and access to information and resources, we are breaking cycles. Families are partners in being part of the solution. Starting with success in the home environment and the early years, and changing the systems that don’t work, families are ensuring the healthy foundation and ongoing progress to set themselves on track for lifelong success. This is our collective work and our promise to our next generation.

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Learn more about the important work of Mission Promise here.