Welcome to the NEW Family Center/La Familia blog! As we kick off our yearlong GROW campaign, we felt it was a perfect time to begin a blog associated with our mission, values, and important work that we do. This blog hopes to function in two ways to:
- Provide a deeper understanding of and resources for raising children and supporting families in multicultural, community spaces.
- Help our supporters and the broader public better understand the value that The Family Center/La Familia provides to our local community.
For the month of August, we wanted to focus on a core value of The Family Center/La Familia, and one that can feel particularly hard to come by during times of increased isolation: TRUST! At The Family Center/La Familia, we define trust as a means for inspiring confidence and mutual respect to create a foundation for reliable support and good stewardship. While we love this explanation of what trust feels like, we are still left asking how we get there? What can communities do to build trust? How do we foster trust with and among children?
Here, we have accumulated some resources to better understand trust within a community. This includes, how to foster trust within multicultural communities, how to talk about and build trust with kids, and what barriers and systems of support are important for building trust with isolated and underrepresented community members.
Building Trust in Communities
- Trust takes work, within ourselves, our families, and our small or large communities. The building blocks of trust in these articles seem to connect across each of those spaces and resonate well with the work of The Family Center/La Familia.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/dennisjaffe/2018/12/05/the-essential-importance-of-trust-how-to-build-it-or-restore-it/#6edaa24464fe
- https://www.innerchange.com/parents-resources/building-relationships-of-trust/
- https://extension.umn.edu/vital-connections/building-trust-communities
Building Trust with Kids
- Supporting one another in our communities builds trust! Teaching and empowering kids about becoming active members of their communities is a great way to these start conversations at a young age. Here is a great list of multicultural children’s books about the power of community: https://coloursofus.com/12-multicultural-childrens-books-power-community/
- Family structures are an important building block to fostering a sense of trust in others. These books celebrate families from a variety of background and all kinds of family structures: https://www.kindercare.com/content-hub/articles/2017/may/celebrate-all-families-10-lovefilled-books-about-families-of-every-ilk
Building Trust among Isolation or Fear
- In our world today, building trust with kids and helping them understand their role in community looks different than ever before. This coloring book provides another outlet to begin these conversations with young people: https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/readywrigley/documents/RW_Coping_After_a_Disaster_508.pdf
- Building resiliency in our communities can help create a sustainable lifestyle during a pandemic. When we check in with others, we build our community, and we build trust. Here are two resources about building resiliency within ourselves and with those close to us:
Now that you have a few resources, it might help to understand what role The Family Center/La Familia plays in building and sustaining trust to enhance our community capacity.
At El Nidito/The Little Nest, our early childhood care and education program, our staff and teachers build trust among children and families every day as they grow young minds. The Family Center/La Familia is dedicated to providing safe, stimulating, nurturing, and inclusive education for young children at an affordable cost for families. El Nidito provides a unique, multi-cultural, bi-lingual experience through a curriculum that fosters exploration and discovery to instill confidence and foster a space where trust in self, others, and community can grow.
At El Nidito/The Little Nest, our early childhood care and education program, our staff and teachers build trust among children and families every day as they grow young minds. The Family Center/La Familia is dedicated to providing safe, stimulating, nurturing, and inclusive education for young children at an affordable cost for families. El Nidito provides a unique, multi-cultural, bi-lingual experience through a curriculum that fosters exploration and discovery to instill confidence and foster a space where trust in self, others, and community can grow.
Through our family support services, The Family Center/La Familia works hard to provides responsive programming to our community’s most disparately affected and marginalized families. We have built programs for ESL, citizenship courses, parent education, and emergency family assistance programs to remind families that we are here not just as a system of support but a trusting space for families to succeed as important, valued members of our community.
With Mi Voz/My Voice, our leadership and advocacy program, we follow a community-led process that supports broad engagement and empowers community members to work together to solve local issues. Mi Voz NoCo is an important partner in our mission to build trust and is dedicated to making positive changes throughout Northern Colorado.
We invite you to support these initiatives and the mission of The Family Center/La Familia by joining our monthly donor campaign GROW. Learn more about this campaign and the impact you can make on our work here: https://thefamilycenterfc.org/grow/
Click here to begin your donation TODAY!
*If you are new to The Family Center/La Familia and/or would to learn more about the work that we do, please check out our About Us page.