Las Familias Fuertes Comienzan Aquí - Strong Families Start Here: A Virtual Visit to Ser Familia Puerto Rico

Time: Mexico City: 8:30-10:00am/Lima: 9:30-10:00am/Toronto: 10:30am-12:00pm/Buenos Aires: 11:30am-1:00pm/London: 3:30-5:00pm/Madrid: 4:30-6:00pm/Nairobi 5:30-7:00pm/Dubai: 6:30-8:00pm/New Delhi: 8:00-9:30pm.  To determine the event time in your location, please click here for time zone conversion.

Multilingual captioning available

Description:

What difference can a Family Resource Center make in challenging landscape?

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is known for its natural beauty and rich, vibrant culture.It also faces many challenges, including environmental disasters, lack of consistent access to water and electricity, high poverty rates, and a brain drain of educated professionals to the mainland United States leaving behind an aging population.Seeking to make a positive impact by strengthening Puerto Rican families, Ser Familia began working on the island in 2024, building on its more than two decades of successful experience as a nongovernmental community-based organization developing the Latino community in the U.S. state of Georgia.

The new center, Ser Familia Puerto Rico, equips families with skills, resources, and knowledge to be strong, emotionally healthy, and thriving by providing parenting, mental health, and relationship support.The center has a particular focus on promoting healthy relationships - for parents with their children, for couples with each other, and for adolescents approaching dating.These services span a continuum from parenting classes to the highly popular "Cómo Evitar Enamorarte de un/a Idiota" (How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk/Jerkette) series to addressing domestic violence.

Context:

Family Resource Centers (FRCs) are welcoming hubs of support for families, developed in partnership with the community, and typically run by non-governmental organizations or schools, that provide parenting support, access to resources, and build families' social connections with each other.  FRCs co-locate multiple services and supports in one convenient setting, are designed as places that all families can feel comfortable to access without stigma or judgement, and provide services at no or low cost for participants.

There are more than 15,000 FRCs on 5 continents in countries as diverse as Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates.  Independent research has demonstrated that FRCs are an effective strategy for supporting children and families to thrive and protecting children, yielding a $4.93 social return on investment for every U.S. dollar invested, and a 63% reduction in child maltreatment cases.  As FRCs are low-cost programs that can be readily replicated, they can be an effective strategy for countries at various stages of development.

Presenters:

• Belisa M. Urbina, Chief Executive Officer, Ser Familia

• Miguel Urbina, Deputy Director and Director of Franchise Operations, Ser Familia

• Sarimar Hernandez Rivera, Executive Director, Ser Familia Puerto Rico

• Parent Participant 

Moderator:

• Andrew Russo, Co-Founder, International Association of Family Support Networks

Recommended Participants: National, state/provincial, and local policymakers, public departments, private funders, representatives of the early care and education, child protection, and community development fields.

Objectives:

• Participants will understand what Family Resource Centers (FRCs) are and their key roles in ensuring that families are safe, strong, and thriving.
• Participants will understand an example of how a new FRC is established. 
• Participants will understand how they can explore the potential development of FRCs in their areas.