The COFI Way
Strengthening family voices, transforming communities, and impacting real policy and systems change
Building a powerful movement of parent leaders striving for economic, racial, and social justice for all families since 1995
The Model
The COFI Way is a revolutionary approach to community organizing. It’s a model that emphasizes the connection between a parent’s own struggles and those of the greater community. It builds power and capacity for individuals to solve problems by starting with personal development, eventually growing to leverage those strengths and winning lasting change through collective and public action.
1. SELF
2. FAMILY
3. COMMUNITY
4. POLICY & SYSTEMS
The Three Phases
The COFI Way is taught over three comprehensive phases, developing leaders and helping parents build organizations that make a real difference in the community.
Phase 1. Self, Family & Team Building
The COFI Way begins with the individual parent, meeting them exactly where they are in their lives. Through storytelling, self-reflection, and group work, the parent identifies their needs, goals, and action plans. Soon, they start to work to achieve their goals.
In the second half of Phase 1, COFI teaches parents Team Building, based on the belief that societal change happens when empowered individuals set goals and work together to accomplish them.
Phase 2: Community Outreach & Action
Next, parent teams broaden their scope and begin to work within their greater communities. COFI teaches teams to build relationships with other community residents and entities, conduct door-to-door community assessments (which brings new parents and partners into the fold), and launch action campaigns.
Phase 3: Policy & Systems Change
In the final and ongoing phase of The COFI Way, COFI builds off the first two phases to implement powerful policy and systems change. Parents build solid, trusting relationships across cultures, other communities, and with professional allies inside and outside the system in order to win policy and systems change that affects the lives of families everywhere.
COFI also teaches parents how to create the organizational structure needed to sustain their ongoing development of new leaders and campaign organizing work.
Empowering Black and Brown Parent Voices for Change
“Traditional” community organizing models often don’t center the voices of low-income families, especially those of mothers and grandmothers. The COFI Way is different, as it aims to strengthen these very voices to make significant policy and systems changes – leading to healthy and happy families living in safe communities.
Learn The COFI Way
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