The COFI Way

Strengthening family voices, transforming communities, and impacting real policy and systems change

A group of powerful, confident women stride towards the camera

Building a powerful movement of parent leaders striving for economic, racial, and social justice for all families since 1995

Rooted in the core belief that parents are among the real experts best equipped to solve issues affecting their children and families, The COFI Way is a family focused parent leadership and organizing model that has helped thousands of parents around the country find their inner leader within. The parents then go on to change their communities for the better and enact policy and systems change on local, state, and federal levels.

A diagram showing "The COFI Way;" There's a green circle starting off inside three other circles that reads "self," then it expands to: family, community, policy and systems

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.

Here’s how the model works:

1. SELF

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.

2. FAMILY

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.

3. COMMUNITY

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.

4. POLICY & SYSTEMS

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.

A group of trainers, trainees, and children at Phase 3 Advanced Leader Training graduation

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.

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Empowering Black and Brown Parent Voices for Change

The COFI Way was created to build family-supportive communities by developing parents’ capacities to lead, with diverse populations that have historically been excluded from decision-making tables in mind. The model reaches families in deep poverty (including those who receive public benefits), recent immigrant families, families with current and incarcerated family members, and families led by grandmothers raising children.

“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.