At A Glance
Children do best when nurtured by involved, knowledgeable and empathic adults. A fast changing world however has changed the way many parents parent. Divorce, multiple sets of parents, loss of community and extended family, busy schedules, dual income families, single parents, media, lack of experienced role models all impact the critical early years of a child's life. It takes a village to support and inspire the adults who are guiding the next critical generation. Parents, family members and the people who care for young children need local support.

What Parents & Children Really Need
Schools and government can’t tell parents how to parent. It is up to us to meet this challenge. Parents and childcare providers need caring, empathic communities. They need mentors and direct access to the best science and best childcare practices from around the world. Continuing education must be convenient, engaging, affordable, relevant and inspiring. Local businesses need to understand and support the changing needs of developing families. Personal connections must be maintained that match local resources with local needs.

A Systems Approach
Nurturing revolutionizes the way local community’s mentor and support parents. The project draws together, on a regular basis, parents, childcare providers and civic mentors and delivers to these partnerships the best childcare models and best science from around the world. Nurturing engages and sustains personal communication between parents, childcare providers and civic leaders. The goal is to surround parents and early childcare providers with a village, to plant into this village inspired information and develop the personal relationships required to meet local needs with local resources - and to do this neighborhood by neighborhood all across the land.

Business Model
Working with local nonprofit affiliates Nurturing partners civic sponsors, service organizations (Rotary International, for example), local banks and corporations with local childcare communities, Head Start programs, pre schools. Sponsors provide a tax deductible subscription of support resources delivered to these partnerships every six weeks. Serving as "civic mentors" local business and community leaders volunteer their problem solving and networking skills to support the needs of local parents, children and early childcare providers. Approximately 45% of net revenues generated by Nurturing partnerships flow into nonprofit organizations.

Goals
Every six weeks, eight times per year, The Nurturing Project delivers directly to neighborhood centers an inspired continuing education and support package at no cost to parents pr providers. The project accomplishes three objectives:

• Personal and professional staff development for early child care educators and providers. This involves capacity building, stress management, nonviolent communication and effective group communication skills in addition to the best science and best child development practices from around the world.

• Community building, continuing education, engagement, peer mentoring and support of parents.

• The involvement of local businesses, banks, corporations and service organizations, Rotary for example, as "civic mentors." The goal: to build and sustain proactive channels of communication designed to meet local needs with local resources.

What Are We Asking?
That educators and early childcare providers use these resources for staff development, parent involvement and community building. No strings. No hidden agendas. No two centers will use the system excitedly the same way. Some will begin with staff development. Others will use the Nurturing System to enrich an already strong parent education program. Bev Bos, for example, schedules a pot-luck family support meeting every month. Each program is unique. Nurturing is a flexible model designed to be adapted to the needs of each center. The insight driving the project is simple. Child development is dependent on adult development. By inspiring and uplifting adults we uplift all of childhood.

Getting Started
Visit www.nurturing.us and fill out the online application. If you are a childcare provider, preschool or Head Start program for example, or a home school or parent support organization, make a list of potential sponsors, local banks, service clubs, and corporations. We will schedule a telephone call and create together a personal invitation for each potential sponsor. A representative of The Nurturing Project will contact each sponsor, describe the benefits of the system and explain why supporting your program is so important.

Sponsors
Sponsors serve in two ways. They provide an annual $880 tax deductible subscription of support resources delivered to your center every six weeks. Sponsors also serve as "advocates" or "civic mentors" by volunteering approximately thirty-two hours of community networking and problem solving skills each year to support your center. The Nurturing System builds and sustains proactive channels of communication between community leaders and the people who care for young children. The goal is to meet local needs with local resources. Nurturing builds the personal relationships that enable local needs to be met with local resources.

Strategic Use of Media & Technology
A Carnegie study found that only 5% of lifelong learning takes place through schooling or instruction, which includes media, and of this 5% we retain only 3% to 5% for any length of time.
The vast majority of lifelong learning, some say 95%, unfolds, day by day through interaction with the environment. The brain and development is "experience dependent." It is our experience that we remember lifelong, and this involves above all our relationships and social environments.
The goal of The Nurturing Project is to enrich the social relationships and experiences that involve and surround children. Media is used to draw communities together, to stimulate personal interaction and dialogue. Nurturing creates intimate living communities (rich social soil) and plants into this soil inspired information (via media and other technologies). Media without this social context is like a seed without soil, sun and water. Nurturing informs and goes beyond by using proven broadcast skills to sustain and deepen personal communication.

Benefits
For Parents: Nurturing is convenient, engaging, builds community, creates peer mentoring opportunities, provides engaging media and distant learning opportunities, locally, at no cost.

For Providers: Nurturing provides inspired local and distant learning opportunities for continuing education and staff development. Nurturing creates greater understanding and continuity between the home and childcare environments. It develops empathic communication and listening skills, at no cost to providers or staff.

For Civic Sponsors: Nurturing creates a personal and direct connection that directly impacts the lives of local children, families and the people who care for young children. It channels local business and networking skills in ways that directly impact local families, children early childhood educators and child care providers. Nurturing provides an online database that matches local resources with local needs. For regional affiliates, such as Unite Way, Nurturing enhances their ability to serve developing children, families and providers. Nurturing creates and sustains a source of revenue for local nonprofit organizations.

For information contact:
Michael Mendizza
michael@nurturing.us
805 688-2190