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Families are often the end users of educational outreach materials and resources, particularly in projects targeting young children. Working with families in mind can greatly enhance your plan, as well as provide important information and resources. Yet working with parents is a challenge, as it is often difficult to reach and involve them in educational efforts. Defining your goals for this audience is critical, as these goals will significantly affect the shape of your efforts, help define your content and evaluation measures, help you determine the best ways to reach families, and ultimately shape the strategies you use to work with them.
If you are considering families as your target audience, there are some critical questions to explore. Why do you want to work with parents? How will working with parents help you achieve your goals? How can you work with parents to optimize achieving these goals? And, significantly, what action do you want parents to take, and is this action realistic? For instance, you may want to help parents support their children's skill development in a specific area, such as literacy or science, or you may want to improve parenting skills in a particular area by providing background information on early childhood development. How do you ensure that parents will do what you want them to do (e.g., use your resources in the timeframe you define)? Given that an audience of parents is such a broad one to target, do you need to define a subset more narrowly?
Because parents are extremely busy and have conflicting demands on their time and energy, you need to provide compelling reasons why they should invest their limited resources in your project. This is your "benefits" list. It defines what it is about your project or resources that will help parents be better parents or help their children do better in school, be healthier, or improve their social skills. This is the hook. In developing your benefits list, remember that all parents want the best for their children. They are likely to respond positively to efforts that appeal to this desire. Be clear, concise, and explicit. Help them understand how your project contributes to their children's healthy growth and development, why it is important, what resources are available and what support your project provides, and how the parents' participation supports the process. In addition, give them a clear idea of their role and your expectations in the project. No one likes open-ended time commitments; you need to provide specific dates and times when their services will be needed. Try to provide them with different ways to participate that integrate easily into their already hectic lives.
Where to Find Parents
Now that you have clarified what you want from parents and what you will provide, how do you locate them? Finding parents is not as easy as it may seem. It's made even more difficult by the fact that you'll usually want a diverse group of individuals that represent the audience you are trying to serve. Don't reinvent the wheel. One of the most effective ways to reach parents is by partnering with agencies, institutions, and organizations that work with parents on an ongoing basis. Integrate your outreach efforts into their existing programs, and use their expertise to help you develop appropriate content for the target families. The staffs of these organizations bring invaluable firsthand experiences in working with the parents. They can be key to promoting parent participation since they understand the needs of the population, already have a relationship with parents, and often share a common background and experiences with them.
Some things to consider: Are you trying to reach parents with children in a particular age group? What is the socioeconomic or literacy level of the families you want to reach? Do you need ongoing or one-time-only contact with families?
Preschools, elementary schools, and after-school programs are good places to reach parents of younger children. Another approach is through informal education organizations where parents tend to volunteer, such as Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, 4-H Councils, museums, libraries, and sports teams. Home schoolers can also be an important audience for your resources. There are several national educational organizations that work with home schoolers, including the Home School Legal Defense Association, National Home Education Network, and National Home Education Research Institute. And finally, the Ready To Learn coordinators at individual public television stations are among your most valuable resources for reaching parents. Most of them target parents, among other audiences, for their workshops, events, and communications.
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