COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND FAMILY ISSUES
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : c**i@c********e.o*g
Mission Statement
Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) brings a unique approach to community organizing, explicitly created to build the voice and power of low-income parents of color to champion community and systems changes they prioritize, ones that improve living, learning, and earning outcomes for their families and, thus, advance racial equity and justice. Since 1995, COFI has trained over 5,400 low-income Latinx and African American parents who, in turn, have ‘won’ recess for elementary schools, replaced ‘zero tolerance’ with ‘restorative justice’ in schools, enrolled thousands of low-income children in quality preschool, and gained tax breaks and fee reductions for low-income families. This year, COFI will continue to train new parents in its The COFI Way leadership and organizing model and support parents in their campaigns to gain racial and economic justice in Illinois’ education and health care systems, its public fees and tax structures, and utilities affordability.
About This Cause
1. Local Leadership Development and Community Organizing COFI provides leadership training and community organizing support to low-income parents of color in local communities. COFI reaches out to parents who are prospective civic leaders and trains and supports them in The COFI Way of community organizing and systems change making. The COFI Way is a three-phase model explicitly created to center change agendas on the well-being of children and families through the leadership and organizing muscle of low-income parents of color. The model is detailed in-depth at www.cofionline.org. COFI currently works with parent action teams and cross-neighborhoods teams of parents across over two dozen Chicago neighborhoods as well as in Aurora, Elgin, Evanston, and Metro East Illinois/East St. Louis and recently, in Rockford and Waukegan. 2. Cross-Community Parent-Led Policy and Systems Change Advocacy COFI supports and facilitates the work of Parents Organized to Win, Educate, Renew - Policy Action Council, Illinois (POWER-PAC IL), a cross-community/statewide parent leadership group advocating for systems changes that increase equity for low-income families of color. POWER-PAC IL is a statewide membership group that welcomes any COFI-trained parent leader. Its action agenda is developed by the membership and is focused on several multi-year systems change campaigns that the parent leaders have articulated to be priorities for improving living, earning, and learning outcomes of their families. Current campaigns are: • The Stepping Out of Poverty Campaign, focused on reducing the racial wealth gap and increasing family economic security by reducing/eliminating ‘junk’ fees and fines that mire low-income families in debt, increasing tax fairness (wins include a state EIC increase and a state Child Tax Credit), implementing Guaranteed Basic Income and First Step pilots, and reducing utilities costs/debt. • The Early Learning Campaign, focused on universal and equitable access to high quality and affordable early care and education and other programming such as early intervention and maternal, infant and toddler mental health supports for families with children 0-5. COFI also supports the engagement of low-income parents as leaders/partners in early childhood policymaking and programming at the city and state levels. • The Elementary Justice Campaign, instituting Restorative Justice – and shifting resources from policing children to increasing social-emotional learning resources – in Chicago Public Schools and throughout Illinois elementary schools; working to end punitive practices that have pushed way too many low-income children of color out of school. • The Health, Food and Recess Campaign, which ‘won’ 30 minutes of free-play recess for all Illinois elementary school children, and works to improve school nutrition, increase access to supplemental nutrition programs, and vastly increase and improve the City’s and the State’s mental health and trauma services for children and families. 3. Share the Learning Program Through the COFI Center for Action and Learning, COFI has trained over 1000 staff of organizations in Chicago and nationally, develops/distributes descriptive and evaluative communication materials about The COFI Way, and employs a growing communications effort that utilizes social media and is garnering extensive press coverage. COFI convenes a “national learning table” where COFI trained groups share their learning across organizations and build capacity to support evermore low-income parent leader activists organizing nationally on issues of equity for children and families. Through the Center, COFI produces a monthly web update with videos capturing the parents’ stories, a monthly e-newsletter and daily social media posts.