An
Emerging, Energetic Alumni Association
We formally launched our Alumni Association in
August 2009 and have seen much fruit from their volunteer work over the past
year as our alumni have coordinated their efforts around a joint purpose.
Since August, the Alumni team has met every month
to plan and carry out the work of the Association. Over the year they accomplished
several goals:
- In August they worked with the Avance-Dallas staff teams to knock on
doors and recruit families.
- In September they served as graduate speakers who talked
with new parents, congratulating them and explaining the benefit Avance-Dallas brings to them and their families.
- In November they worked with Dallas ISD staff to
organize a Magnet School Fair for Avance-Dallas
parents and graduates.
- Over the winter
months they accomplished the weighty feat of organizing the first Alumni
Directory divided by geographic area.
- In April they organized Avance-Dallas’s Second Annual Alumni Reunion event held at the
Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), which featured among other things a presentation on
what the Alumni Association is doing for Avance-Dallas
graduates, as well as a dance workshop for moms.
One of the highlights of the Reunion event was Frida
Espinosa Muller’s DMA-commissioned work, “Juana Ines: The Girl Who Wanted to
Read.” The dramatic retelling of this seventeenth-century Mexican prodigy’s story
tracks her lifelong interest in reading, from her devouring the books in her
father’s library at a young age to the Spanish viceroy bringing her to live at
the palace with its much bigger library at age thirteen. During her years there
as a teenager, she astonished the learned scholars from the country who would
visit the viceroy and examine her knowledge. The story of Juana’s life conveyed
an important educational message to our families.
Our alumni have so embraced the centrality of
reading to their children that one project they got involved in this year was
our Parent-Child Book Clubs (see the picture of our Book Club leaders below).
The Book Clubs meet for one hour each week over 25 weeks, spreading our core
educational message in an abbreviated format to more families than we can reach
in our Parent-Child Program. Our alumni led fourteen Book Clubs this year, and we’ve found that our graduates are often the
most convincing evangelists for the Avance
message. We’re grateful for the many hours of volunteer service they dedicated
to the Book Clubs this year!
The Alumni Association is led by a core group of
ten women who showed tremendous dedication, talent, and excitement as they launched
our Alumni Association this year. These graduate moms love Avance-Dallas, and the Alumni
Association events and projects gave them the opportunity not only to continue
developing their leadership skills, but also to give back to Avance-Dallas as volunteers and to encourage
and inspire the 2010 Avance
class. These women are Avance-Dallas
pioneers in the work they have accomplished this year.
Our Parent-Child Book Club Volunteer Leaders
Alumni
Serve as Education “Promoters”
At our Baby
University sites in Bachman Lake, Avance-Dallas
graduates helped launch a new effort this year to reach more at-risk families
with the Avance educational
message.
The Promotoras
(“Promoters”) Project seeks to mobilize leaders from the ground up to share
their knowledge, experience, and results with others who can benefit from it,
transforming the community of Bachman Lake. At Avance-Dallas
we believe each individual who enters our program has the ability to grow and
learn at a higher level and the capability to be an effective “mover and
shaker” in the community, applying their leadership potential to make Dallas a
better place.
Our Promotoras focus on the dense Bachman Lake community where one in
ten residents is age zero to three because the area evidences particular need
for education on early childhood development issues.
We work together with TAIMH (Texas Association for Infant Mental Health),
which trains our Promotoras in how to strengthen education, emotional health,
and development of young children as they go out into the community. This year
we trained seven graduates to serve as Promotoras. They will continue in this
function next year, and we will also train additional Promotoras.
After rigorous training, the Promotoras go out into the community and
visit young families in their homes, providing information and resources about
the importance of attending to their child’s early development. These volunteer
graduates promote awareness of the possibilities that open up when parents give
their children a better education.
This year the Promotoras started visits in February with 8
families and their 21 children. By April they increased to 36 families and
their 80 children. By the end of the school year we expect to have served 49
families.
In addition
to visiting families in their homes, the Promotoras helped organize and deliver
a community workshop on April 9 at the Bachman Lake Library. The Promotoras
made presentations about their own experiences as parents and leaders, and they
also gave time to three other community-based agencies. The event drew 150
people in attendance. The Promotoras are planning two additional leadership
projects this year, with the goal of reaching at least 100 more families with educational
information and resources.
The Baby
University Program and this Promotoras Project is funded by the Zero to Five
Funders’ Collaborative. The Collaborative includes funding from the Dallas
Foundation, the Meadows Foundation, the M. R. and Evelyn Hudson Foundation,
Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation, the Rees-Jones Foundation, Communities
Foundation of Texas, M. B. and Edna Zale Foundation, Harold Simmons Foundation,
the Dallas Women’s Foundation, the Catholic Foundation, and two anonymous
foundations. Additional members of the Collaborative include Dallas Social
Venture Partners and the Dallas Regional Chamber.
Women Leaders
from the Hispanic 100 Group “Teach at Avance”
During the
last week of March, we held our Second Annual “Teach at Avance” week. Six successful women from the Dallas-Forth
Worth Hispanic 100 spoke to our
moms about their own journeys and inspired them to achieve great heights.
Special
thanks goes to Alice Rodriguez (pictured in the gray suit), who organized a
band of six dynamic speakers from the Hispanic 100 group: Gloria Bahamon, Laura
Estrada, Cecilia McKay, Regina Montoya, Lilian Rosales (who spoke to two parent
groups), and Alice herself.
The Hispanic
100 mission is “to serve as a catalyst for Hispanic women in employment,
procurement, and social issues.” And the volunteer speakers clearly furthered
their group’s mission by participating in the “Teach at Avance” week, witnessed by the response of our parents.
Avance-Dallas
mothers were delighted and honored to have such successful
Hispanic business women take time out of their busy days to speak to them. Their
stories inspired our parents to continue on with their own education and to explore
their entrepreneurial interests. Some moms are now considering cottage
businesses of their own, and other opportunities are growing out of the event
too, including a possible tour of the University of North Texas for our parents
led by one of the speakers.
The event also reminded moms who are focused on
their own young children right now how they can help them achieve the success
these speakers have attained. Seeing the individuals in person gave our parents
a concrete image of achievement, something they can translate into a vision of
success for their children.
The impact that an hour with these successful women
leaders will have on the extended families of our parents may never be fully
known. Special thanks to these inspirational volunteers!
Partner
Spotlight: March of Dimes
The March of Dimes Texas Chapter
has committed an $8,000 grant to the 2010–2011 Avance-Dallas
program year. This investment ensures that our families get the pregnancy and
newborn information they need so they can give their children a healthy start
to life.
We’re
delighted to continue our partnership with the March of Dimes. Not only do they
support Avance-Dallas with the
critical funding we need to continue our high-impact program; they also provide
educational materials in their field of expertise for us to pass on to at-risk
families who benefit most from them.
Each year, local March of Dimes chapters
award grants to external organizations across the state in order to address
unmet maternal and infant health needs. These community grants are one way that
the March of Dimes pursues its mission of saving babies by preventing birth
defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.
Our families and
staff thank you, March of Dimes, for cherishing the lives of our children and
investing in them through Avance-Dallas!