LED BY
REAL FAMILIES.
BUILDING FAMILY POWER.
Forsyth Family Power Think-and-Do Tank is an organization which is led by families of students attending Title 1 schools in the WS/FCS district where families coalesce with community partners to support family engagement efforts and influence district leadership to ensure equity for all students. To do this, Forsyth Family Power prioritizes family and community conversation mapping, innovative parent engagement, and community facilitation and principal leadership. We make sure that students are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged within their own schools, communities, and homes. Our goal is to Engage youth and families to break down systems of injustice and build systems of equity and inclusion through community-designed solutions.
WHAT DRIVES OUR FIGHT.
Our mission is to completely dissolve the academic opportunity gap by creating culturally-affirming learning environments for Black and Brown children.
To do this, Forsyth Family Power Think and Do Tank supports family organizing and advocacy entities which are already striving to eliminate racial discrimination and injustice within our school systems. We aim to enable parents, teachers, and administrators to create spaces that are the ideal learning environments for Black and Brown students.
WHY WE FIGHT.
We fight for an educational system in which each student is emotionally and physically healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged because we believe that a world where each and every child has an equal chance at education.
OUR PLAN TO FIGHT.
Forsyth Family Power is a Think & Do Tank whose mission is to navigate systems with families through collaboration, information, and advocacy to achieve systems change resulting in justice. Forsyth Family Power operates using a family organizing and strategic framework, built around transformative organizing and trauma informed care.
Forsyth Family Power supports a collaborative community and culturally responsive effort in the implementation of the Whole School. Whole Community, Whole Child Model (WSCC), which uses an integrated, collaborative approach to address barriers and supports related to learning and health per the WSFC/SS strategic plan.
HOW THE FIGHT STARTED.
Forsyth Family Power collaborates on and influences policy decisions in the WS/FCS district that fosters equity in education through the use of the “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child” model, while positioning principals and community leaders to help empower families as stakeholders in education in order to advocate on behalf of all students.
To do this work, we take a systems change approach, which shifts the conditions that hold the problem in place, rather than addressing the symptoms of the problem. As a systems change agent, Forsyth Family Power helps family-systems work better for both the parents and the children through collaborating and partnering with members of the community. These systems are not limited to education. They include health, early childhood care, and family support. The goal is to strengthen all of these systems and make sure that they are equitable and accessible for all young children and families.
We convene families, with a strong focus and emphasis on parent experiences, through work groups which are highly specialized and explore the different facets of racial bias within the education system. We operate through an assets-based lens, meaning that we look at the strengths of a community rather than its weaknesses. Our work helps families not only build community power, but it also helps them develop community interdependence.