Leadership begins from within. Parents individually assess their needs, wants, and values. They create supportive teams with one another, set goals, and establish plans for achieving those goals.

Parents become stronger leaders in their families. Parents support one another in gaining skills and confidence as family leaders, and also learn to set goals with their family members.

Parents work together to create change in community institutions such as schools, childcare centers, and social service agencies. To make their community more family friendly, parent leaders meet with neighbors, find common ground, develop new programs, organize community-wide campaigns, and realize the power of a collective voice.

Parent leaders create a cross-community policy agenda that starts with common concerns raised by parents, such as childcare, safety, or school quality. Together, parent leaders organize to communicate their ideas and concerns to public decision-makers. They may change programs and challenge policies that aren’t meeting the needs of families, and they build partnerships with professionals to develop programs and policies that work.

El estilo COFI 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 Fase 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.

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.

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.