4-H Tech Wizards - Press Release

Closing the Circle – Education is a Family Affair

Date: April 2007

Bienestar Familiar is a program run by Centro Cultural that supports and assists parents and students in the 4-H Tech Wizards Program by providing educational resources who work to help to improve communication between family members and help parents understand how important education is in today’s environment.

The goal for Bienestar Familiar is to provide resources to parents to help them set and reach personal goals and to teach them skills to overcome challenges and barriers. As parents reach their goals they become a positive influence and motivate their children to finish high school and continue their education. The goals and needs for every family are different, and vary based on the fact that each family and every person is unique. .

Workshops are conducted once a month. Before developing the program, homes of the 4-H Tech Wizard families were visited. During the visits the parents expressed their needs, problems, goals, and their desire to obtain information and resources to assist their children in the various areas of education. The workshops were developed around these needs and include topics such as:

How to improve communication with your children
How to discuss physical changes, drug addictions, and gangs with your children
How to better express your feelings in a clear and safe manner.

Parents set personal goals and build a plan that is designed to help them become better educated. This helps them understand the overall value of education and to understand what their children are going through in school. Many parents have time, work, and child care issues so the program was developed to be flexible, remove these barriers, and add incentives. By removing barriers parent enrollment has increased. To reinforce the learning, parents spend several hours volunteering at Centro Cultural sharing what they have learned. Incentives include the loan of a computer upon completion of the course. This provides an opportunity to continue using the skills they learned and to continue to better themselves.

Here is one success story. One mother who was illiterate was faced with the challenge of not having transportation to get to classes. She felt shame and was embarrassed to be attending classes at her age. We motivated her son to be an important part of her support system so that his mother could reach her goal. He was her mentor, supported her, transported her and assisted her with every class. He became a volunteer in her classes to improve her confidence. Today, she still continues participating and attending Literacy classes but her son no longer needs to accompany her. He simply provides her transportation.

The mentors, guides, and supervisors within the program 4-H and Bienestar Familiar have as a foundation direct communication. This is important in contacting parents or students and creating ties with them. We work as a group and this allows us all to be involved in the different activities that occur in both programs, for the families and the youth. With this we can reach a clear sense of communication, we are able to work as a group, and helps us in improving ourselves as a group, as a program, as well as improving the well-being of the youth and their families. We are working together in hopes that the community, will see that it is possible that with hard work, and perseverance goals are achieved which are worthy of imitating.

Paulina Bravin
Bienestar Familiar Program Coordinator
Centro Cultural & 4-H Tech Wizards

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