AVANCE - San Antonio, Inc
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Mission Statement
AVANCE breaks the cycle of inter-generational poverty through innovative, two generation education and support for families with young children.
About This Cause
AVANCE serves families with young children (birth-pre-K) who are living in the vicious cycle of generational poverty. The challenges our families face include a lack of education, unemployment, food insecurity, isolation, addiction, spousal and child abuse, homelessness, violence, and incarceration. Family circumstances during the first few years of life can have long-lasting effects on children’s overall development and on school readiness. It is during these early years that children are the most dependent on their parents to provide the cognitive stimulation, nurturing, emotional stability, and physical comforts needed to promote optimal growth and development. Adverse, long-term outcomes without these supports have been well documented, and the zip codes in which AVANCE serves have the highest rates of suspected child abuse and neglect in the state. We focus on the whole family by: - teaching parents how to create a loving, stimulating environment for their children, - helping parents to identify and achieve their own educational and career goals so they can support their family, and - providing children attain a high quality, early childhood education to ensure they are school ready. AVANCE’s dual generation approach not only increases parenting skills and prevents child abuse, but also provides the needed family supports to help parents lift their families out of poverty and give their children the positive, enriched family experience needed to thrive. AVANCE services are designed to focus on a target population with the following characteristics: at-risk communities living in poverty, very little education, un- or under-employed, socially isolated, lacking basic knowledge on health, nutrition and child-wellness, and an extreme lack of parenting skills which may lead to child abuse and neglect. 93% of clients served by AVANCE-San Antonio are Hispanic, many of whom are Spanish speaking only. 87% are female and, of those, 55% are single and 76% were teenage mothers when they had their first child. Only 62% of parents have a high school diploma or GED coming into our programs, but longitudinal studies have shown that 94% of our parent graduates go on to attain higher education and employment after completing our program. Median household income is ~$32K and per capita income is ~$13.5K, among the very lowest in the city. The percentage of children under 5 living in poverty ranges between 42 and 50%, the highest level in Bexar County. Our Parent-Child Education Program (PCEP) is a rigorous 9-month parenting program for 300 parents of 350 children 0-4 years old (650 total) and provides parents the knowledge and tools needed to guide the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development of their children. Parents learn the value of education for both their children and themselves as a way out of poverty. Our Caminos al Futuro/Pathways to the Future Program provides case management on career readiness and workforce development skills for our parents. We also teach financial literacy and nutrition classes, and run health clinics to ensure children are receiving preventive care and have a medical home. When families have a sense of personal efficacy & self-esteem, an economically stable home environment, & are knowledgeable about child development, they become effective & supportive parents. Our 2-gen model is the most cost-effective way of reducing school failure while increasing overall community productivity.