The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all areas of life. Parents faced a crisis that left them lacking in what to do while also frazzled because they were facing many new challenges at once. In June, the OUR Center and Parent Engagement Network are teaming up to share “A Recipe for Resilience.”
Parent Engagement Network is a nonprofit organization created to support parents as they raise children. The organization has been around for nearly 20 years and has operated primarily from Boulder, said Executive Director Stacy Cornay.
Cornay is a Longmont resident and wanted to expand the nonprofit’s reach into the city. She began by partnering with the St. Vrain Valley School District as part of the Parent University — which provides training, information and resources to parents to support the success of their children, the SVVSD website states.
Cornay had worked with the OUR Center in the past and discovered that the two nonprofits have similar goals in supporting parents.
“We could join together and enhance both of our efforts,” Cornay said.
After several meetings, the two organizations decided to host an event to help local parents, especially after the challenges of COVID-19.
“Since COVID, what we are seeing, universally, across all the areas that we serve, is that parents are so overwhelmed — all caregivers, not just parents — with what happened during COVID … What we are really finding is that they don’t know how to cope,” Cornay said.
To help parents learn how to cope, Parent Engagement Network and OUR Center will host A Recipe for Resilience event on June 21 at 6:30 p.m. at the OUR Center. Dinner and childcare will be provided, however, participants must register for the event. Registration ends on June 19.
The event will provide parents with research-based information and an opportunity to form a community around them to aid in child-rearing.
“This is something that we need to address as our children grow and develop as resiliency skills are required throughout life. We are now seeing, post-COVID, many more families struggling to be resilient. We will provide strategies, discussion and steps that will provide participants with ways they can build resiliency for themselves and their families. We want them to be able to immediately apply what they’ve learned,” Cornay said.
“Providing ways for families to thrive is central to our mission,” said Marc Cowell, executive director of OUR Center. “Working with parents enables them to not only learn information that they can use with themselves and their children, it also enables our youth to learn more as they develop. In this way our entire community wins.”
