The Nurturing Project

 
Parent+Child Development Centers (PCDC)
Expanding the vision, skill and capacity of the existing local and national early childcare and education network to include parent development as an equal priority with child development. InspirationThe Parent+Child Development Center model was inspired in by Bev Bos, having given over 6,000 workshops to parents and provider and her thirty year experience developing the Roseville Community Preschool near Sacramento California, the collected works of Joseph Chilton Pearce, and the dialogue-council communication process inspired by Physicist David Bohm.

Child Development is Dependent on Adult Development
To balance the human development equation adults must continue to grow and develop in ways that parallel the growth and education of young children. The collapse of the extended family broke this reciprocal dynamic after World War II. Parents were marginalized out of the equation. They lost direct and regular contact with trusted mentors. We created a national system where children more or less developed and parents did not, which continues today.

The Challenge
There is no shortage of wisdom or information. Basketball players, dancers, chefs, artists, even doctors and lawyers practice. For every skill there is a safe place to explore and develop that needed capacity - except for parents.Yes, parent involvement is mandatory in most programs. What’s missing is not a class or standardized curriculum, but rather regular, practical, mentored practice and experience for today’s parents. The truth is, providers and educators haven’t been trained nor do they have inspired up-to-date resources or the support to mentor parents.The proposed model provides the training, staff development, community support and expanding library of inspired resources to allow existing early childcare and education programs to succeed at parent development as skillfully as they meet the needs of children. This is accomplished at no cost to parents, providers, the government or ongoing support from foundations.

Parent-Child Development Centers (PCDC)
Rather than early childhood education we will have Parent-Child Development Centers where, side-by-side with child development, parents and the people who care for children explore and practice the art of mentoring the next critical generation. PCDCs are neighborhood based, convenient, trusted and safe.

• PCDCs offer a balance of theory and practice.
• Knowledge and mentored experiences are inspired, up-to-date, tested and relevant.
• Flexible and community led – each PCDC adapts its time and resources to meet the real life challenges of local parents and providers and does so on a regular basis.
• The capacities developed in PCDCs go beyond traditional child development, ages and stages, and include stress management, nonviolent communication and group process that develop social-emotional intelligence and communication skills of parents and providers.
• Delivered every six weeks, eight times per year, the first set of resources, Nurturing Basics features Joseph Chilton Pearce, Bev Bos, Marshall Rosenberg and national leaders in the field.
• A bi-lingual, English and Spanish, magazine is planned that would summarize issues and key concepts associated with the PCDC network. This will be delivered to participating parents’ and providers’ homes at no charge.
• The entire PCDC Network requires no government funding, no additional taxes, no large bureaucracies, is locally funded and administered. The network is designed to expand throughout the United States and internationally without ongoing funding from foundations.

How Does It Work?

Step One – Existing childcare and education programs expand their vision to include parent development as an equal, non-optional component of their program and apply to the network.

Step Two – A staff member at each center becomes the PCDC Coordinator who is paid to attend three-hour regional training with other coordinators in their community. At these meetings, scheduled every six weeks, coordinators experience and are trained in the use of an expanding collection of staff and parent development resources. These resources include the latest science, best practices, stress management, nonviolent communication and peer-mentored dialogue skills and processes.

Step Three – Coordinators schedule similar meetings at their neighborhood center and model what was learned with parents and staff.

Affordable – The resources needed to sponsor a local Parent-Child Development Center is a tax deductible $2,250 per year - $1,000 funds staff participation and $1,250 provides onsite resources and training for twelve months.

Administered Locally – Organizations such as the YMCA or United Way serve as regional hubs. Universities collaborate by monitoring and evaluating each network.

Community Supported – local businesses and civic groups, Rotary, banks, local companies adopt PCDCs similar to community sponsorship of athletic teams. Sponsors donate $2,200 per year to their local YMCA, for example, and serve as community advocates for their adopted program.

Expanding, Turn-key System – A paid administrator, serving as self employed consultant, develops each regional network in collaboration with nonprofit hubs. The same regional administrator works with PCDC coordinators to recruit civic organizations, banks, or businesses as sponsors.

Pilot – Five pilot programs with ten to twenty PCDCs in each region are being organized each year for two years, ten regions total. Potential locations include San Diego, Santa Monica-Malibu, Santa Barbara, Monterey-Pacific Grove, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Austin, Sun Valley, New Orleans, and Hawaii.

Pilot Funding – A two-year matching request of $125,000 per year is being developed for the Gates and other major foundations to develop five regional pilot programs each year. In Santa Barbara County, for example, a request to the Orfalea Foundations for $22,000 is matched by the Gates Foundation which will fund twenty neighborhood PCDCs. A similar request made to the Chumash Indians Foundation in Santa Ynez, $22,000 matched by the Gates Foundation, will fund twenty neighborhood PCDCs.

Sustainable Local Funding – Foundation support plus university monitored and evaluated pilot programs will generate the proven track record and benefits needed by local sponsors to adopt individual programs. During the pilot phase regional administrators work with PCDC coordinators to recruit civic organizations, banks, or businesses as sponsors, thus transferring long-term support to the local community at an affordable, tax deductible cost of $2,200 per year per center or program.

Serving Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Families via the Internet
Some parents have the benefits of community. Many do not. The neighborhood network model is being adapted into a virtual community. The same parent and staff resources will be available online as a self passed, bilingual development system complete with streaming media, study guides, regional forums, local networking, a shared resources database and progress completion certification. The community based funding model is being scaled to meet individual needs. The goal is to make these resources available to 500,000 foster care families and tens of thousands of families in the juvenile justice system – at no cost, via $200 community sponsored tax deductible scholarships.

Bi-lingual DVDs representing the first three of eight programs called Nurturing Basics are available for review. English and Spanish transcripts along with support publications can be found at www.nurturing.us, see resources. Each year eight new resource packages will be delivered to each neighborhood Parent-Child Development Center. 

Continuing adult development is the weakest factor in the human development equation. This local, practical peer-mentored development is the key not only to healthy children but to education, safe neighborhoods, gang activity, the foster care system, childhood obesity, drug abuse. The list goes on and on.

There is no shortage of information, best practices, research and successful models. What is missing are safe, inspired, local playgrounds where parents, the people who care for children, meet, discover and practice the art of mentoring the next critical generation and do so on a regular basis.

Early childhood providers and educators haven’t been trained nor do they have resources or support to mentor parents. The Nurturing Network model provides the training, staff development, community support and expanding library of inspired resources to allow existing early childcare and education programs to succeed at parent development as skillfully as they meet the needs of children.

This is accomplished at no cost to parents, providers, the government or ongoing support from foundations. The time has come to balance the human development equation by reaching out, mentoring and supporting parents and the people who care for children. Child development is dependent on adult development and that takes practice, just like riding a bike.

With appreciation,
Michael Mendizza