Parent Programs

Sixteen years ago we realized that in order for our youth work to be effective, we must include service to parents since the origins of many academic difficulties begin before children enter school. That’s why we started our Parent Empowerment Project (PEP) in 1986.

The project utilizes a peer-based leadership model of service delivery to provide five distinct programs:

Bilingual Parent Workshops (English and Spanish):

• Pre-reading and Early Literacy
  
• Early Child Development
  
• The Home Learning Environment
  
• Finding a Good Preschool for Your Child
  
• Stress and Anger Management
  
• Establishing and Maintaining Communication
  
• Healthy Families and Nutrition
  
• Dealing with Anger and Conflict-Violence
  
• Effective, Consistent and Loving Discipline
  
• Household Management and the Working Family
  
• The San Francisco Unified School District - How it Works & How to Work With It
  

Parent Workshops are offered at school sites, community centers, affordable housing complexes and other locations. Our latest site is the Mission Neighborhood Health Center where we provide workshops to pregnant women. More than 100 pregnant and/or women in post partum care have attended these workshops in the past six months.

Home Visiting    top^

In addition to Parent Workshops the Mission Learning Center has been providing home visiting for over six years in order to reach parents who may be unaware of the range of community services available to assist and strengthen their families; and to provide those families with information, referral, support, and encouragement.

Our Home Visitors are bilingual and bicultural and participate in a project sponsored by the Children’s Book Project where they provide early literacy and pre-reading skills development to families with children ages 0-5. The Mission Learning Center also offers Spanish language Parenting Classes for families referred by the Department of Human Services, Child Protective Services.

Parenting Classes

Our parenting classes provide culturally relevant materials and strategies that enable parents to develop conflict resolution skills, participate in their child’s education, develop communication skills, understand effective parenting, give and receive individual support from peers, gain knowledge of child development, the educational system and resources available in the community.

Family Literacy Activities    top^

In our newest program, we provide family literacy activities that make a special effort to reach parents who are not fully literate themselves. These activities provide information, activities and resources that allow parents to create language rich environments for their children.

Family Recreational Activities

We also provide family recreational activities, including distributing hundreds of tickets annually to attend performing arts and sports events. Over time the importance of these activities has increased as many of the children in our programs lead isolated lives that lack the stimulation necessary for a growing mind. We then begin to think of these field trips as an opportunity to contribute to a child’s intellectual growth, to expand knowledge and deepen the joy that can be found through realizing human potential.