Solomon Ujamaa Center Receives First 5 San Bernardino funding to FREE “Family Resilience Education Empower – Parental Education & Bonding Program

First 5 San Bernardino has awarded Solomon Ujamaa Center $608,000 through its Desired Results Request for Proposals 10-01 to provide parenting education and bonding classes in community settings. Collaborating with Solomon Ujamaa Center helps First 5 San Bernardino further its goals of meeting the county’s growing need for families to build on the existing strengths of parents/caregivers, to bring evidence-based best practices to build new capacities of families to nurture, protect and promote child readiness and success in school. First 5 San Bernardino created the opportunity to proactively reach out to the growing needs of families with children ages 0-5 in the county. The funding specifically supports the healthy development of young children, helps prepare them to succeed in school, ensures families are safe and healthy, and helps build systems that are responsive to local needs. “We are pleased to have Solomon Ujamaa Center meet this critical need in our community. The partnership will go a long way in nurturing the health and well-being of our community’s youngest members,” says Karen Scott, Executive Director of First 5 San Bernardino.

The Family Resilience Education Empowerment (FREE) Program uses child reading readiness for school through an evidence-based reading program called Motheread/ Fatheread (1987) as the vehicle for parent education – social, emotional and academic. All parents educational services of our program “FREE” seek to increase family self-sufficiency primarily through an evidence based and culturally sensitive parent education approach that affords all families with children between the ages of 0 to 5 the opportunity to strengthen family resilience, education and empowerment. The funding from First5 Desired Results will benefit families with children ages 0 to 5. Solomon Ujamaa Center developed the “FREE” Family Resilience Education Empowerment Program to help fill in the gap to teach parents/ caregivers to become resilient, empowered, and finally self-sufficient. We are extremely excited to contribute to the communities in which we live and serve and our Executive Director, Owusu Hodari welcomes your support, donations and all interested volunteers. Please feel free to contact between the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 pm at 909-880-3200 or come by our Administrative Offices located at 1505 W. Highland Ave. San Bernardino, CA 92411. You can also used our email us sucinc@yahoo.com. (Website available August 2010)

-Staff Reports