About the Program
The University for Parents is a transformative, community-wide and – driven protocol that focuses on struggling adults in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The program is being built for replication across the 58 U.S. cities where we have local CARES Affiliates, and is designed to extend academic and workforce support, as well as psychological support and direction to comprehensive wrap-around services.
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Under-resourced, overwhelmed caregivers are battling on every front and are stressed beyond measure. Research shows that children in crisis are best served when, in addition to programs supporting their advancement, there is also undergirding available for their parents, many of whom stand wounded and in need of radical healing. The University for Parents curriculum is informed by A New Way Forward: Healing What’s Hurting Black America, our 148-page manual created by our 60-member brain trust of renown leaders in community recovery and total well-being for African Americans.
Our curriculum is built to unearth optimism and liberate a generous and hopeful spirit. It includes education and inspiration and presents caring subject-matter experts as speakers, teachers and guides. Our transformative programming also couples skills-building workshops with intimate, group mentoring gatherings—Wellness Mentoring Circles—that offer principles and practices that foster emotional healing and wellness. Wellness Mentoring Circles are the primary vehicle we use to provide training to mentors.
They are single-gender, intimate gatherings that act as safe spaces for mentors to share triumphs and tribulations, be heard and acknowledged and secure support from peers and trained facilitators to help bring healing and balance to their own lives, so that they can better support our children in crisis. In this way we are reinforcing our ecosystem approach to this community-restoring work with a laser focus on loosening the vicious grip of inter-generational Black poverty.