#Familyhood has three main definitions:
1) #Familyhood is one word to define The Intergenerational Enterprise.
The Intergenerational Enterprise is a collaboration between a school’s Student Government Association, Parent Teacher Association, and Alumni.
“The Intergenerational Enterprise” is too many letters for a Twitter handle, so we use #familyhood to represent this collaboration in one word.
2) #Familyhood is also one word to define “Healthy Economics”.
Healthy Economics (HE) is a community development strategy that defines the school as the center of a communities development.
HE dissects each school into three main organizations: Student Government Association (SGA), Parent Teacher Association and Alumni (PTA) and promotes these organization to collaborate. This collaboration is called The Intergenerational Enterprise.
HE promotes The Intergenerational Enterprise to manage the school’s garden, farmers market and eventually a grocery store.
HE is divided into four main strategies/brands/websites/twitter that work together to recruit volunteers (students/parents/alumni/community partners) to join these organizations and to eventually collaborate.
They are: #1stSaturdays/1stsaturdays.com, #friendsofschool/friendsofschool.org
#familyhood (#1 definition above)/ intergenerationalenterprise.com and #mobetterfood/mobetterfood.com.
To define each:
#1stSaturdays defines the 1st Saturday of each month at the school as the official monthly volunteer/recruitment day.
STEPS TOWARDS #FAMILYHOOD
For the sake of explaining the steps towards #Familyhood, we will call the first person to start #Familyhood at a school site “The Familyhood Organizer” (FO).
Step 1. FO fills- out necessary forms on 1stSaturdays.com/start link and receives general information from us to present to the school of their choice.
Step 2. FO presents our general information to the schools administration.
Step 3. The School’s administration reviews our information and FO’s background (every school has a different process).
Step 4. Once approved, the school adds “Volunteer/ Recruitment Day” on all the 1st Saturdays of the schools calendar.
Step 5. After, the FO’s background is approved by the school and the school’s annual calendar has all the 1stSaturdays days saved, FO begins to organize/promote the schools three main organizations (Student Government Association, Parent Teacher Association and Alumni Association) .
THE ORGANIZING PHASE
The organizing/promoting phase will be different at every school site. For example, some schools will have Student Government Associations, some will not. Some will have functioning PTA’s, some will not. Some will have student councils, some will not. Some will have Alumni involved, and some will not. Some may have two of these organizations functioning, etc.
With all these different scenarios of where a school may be, to be an effective FO, The FO should visualize themselves as the needle and the thread that ties together a beautiful quilt.
The needle punctures the hole
Find the holes (spaces) on campuses where the three main organizations meet.
If they don’t meet, find a space where they could.
The thread binds them
Once the dates and locations of the three main organizations are identified by FO, FO is now equipped to spread the word of each organizations updates to each other. For example, by FO sharing updates of the school’s Student Government Association at the Parent Teacher Assocation and vice-versa, FO becomes the thread that binds them.
The research period is
1) #Friendsofschool’s motto is, “every school shall have a functioning Student Government Association, Parent Teacher Association and Alumni Association.”
Since, many schools do not have these organizations functioning on campus, especially in lower income communities, the #friendsofschool program assists the school’s administration with creating/ engaging and collaborating these organizations with community partners to advance towards #Familyhood (definition 3).
During the 1stSaturday’s volunteer events, #Friendsofschool promotes a portion of time on the agenda to updates from representatives of the school’s SGA, PTA, ALUMNI.
2) #mobetterfood’s motto is “every school shall have a garden, a farmers market and a grocery store.”
Each month, The Intergenerational Enterprise meets at the schools garden or/and farmers market to improve it, with a vision of achieving both motto’s.
3) #Familyhood is the vision of a community or neighborhood becoming a healthy, sustainable, peaceful, community.
We believe we can advance communities towards #Familyhood by utilizing schools as centers for community development.
The site: 1stSaturdays.com will show launch Oct 3rd, 2015 to map schools that are open to host volunteers once a month-every 1st Saturday of the month.
If you would like to organize a 1st Saturday’s at a school near you, click here.
