MAR VISTA FAMILY CENTER
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Mission Statement
Mar Vista Family Center believes that every young person deserves the tools and resources for success. Mar Vista Family Center (MVFC) provides low-income families with quality early childhood education, youth enrichment, and educational tools to allow them to create positive change in their lives and their community. Through education, leadership and advocacy programs, MVFC provides families with a healthy and safe environment where they can grow, learn and support one another.
About This Cause
Mar Vista Family Center (MVFC) was founded 35 years ago on the Westside of Los Angeles in an at-risk community populated by economically-disadvantaged Hispanic and African American families. The founders’ vision was that the Center would not just serve the neighborhood, but be an integral part of the community, run by community residents. Today, MVFC is primarily staffed by local residents who have themselves participated in the Center’s programs, including Lucía Díaz, Chief Executive Officer. Program graduates teach in the preschool, run tutoring programs and provide peer coaching, mirroring the lessons they themselves learned as participants. With its community and alumni connection, MVFC provides services that are culturally and linguistically sensitive, and based on an in-depth understanding of families in the community and their needs. This has, in turn, generated acceptance of the program – and respect for it – by students, parents and the community. With this acceptance and respect, MVFC has been a vital and successful part of individual, family, and community improvement. Initially a parent participation preschool, MVFC’s mission has expanded to provide low-income families with quality early childhood education, youth enrichment and educational tools to create a positive change in their lives and their community. The organization’s founders designed specific processes, activities, and workshops that empower children, teens, and adults to play vital and responsible roles as decision-makers, community leaders, mentors, classroom volunteers, and fundraisers. MVFC has since become a model with effective programs that support entire families and the community. The Center’s long-term involvement with whole families has empowered family functioning, decreased domestic and gang violence, prevented teen pregnancy among youth leaders, improved youth’s academic success, and expanded the number of youth attending college. MVFC’s has expanded its programs and services to include: Early Childhood Education, Community Revitalization, and Youth Leadership, Health & Wellness, Financial Literacy, STEM, Advocacy & Leadership. Participants trained in MVFC’s life skills curriculum lead an array of projects under each program with strong support from over 600 volunteers who help serve as assistant teachers, tutors, community and youth event supporters, and fundraisers. Nearly 1,300 people attend activities taking place at the Mar Vista preschool, S. Mark Taper Foundation Center for Community Leadership, community garden and plaza, and the Everychild Foundation Youth Center. Throughout the last three decades, MVFC has risen to be recognized as an innovator in parent involvement and youth leadership development, and standing at the forefront and an example to others who do similar work in LA County and around the country. The agency has been recognized and celebrated on the national level by the Children’s Defense Fund, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and through a visit to the Center by Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Center has also been held as an example and honored by such venerable partners in philanthropy in Government as the California Community Foundation, the City of Los Angeles and the State of California for the unique, forward-thinking and innovative programming that is the model of the agency.