Parent Cafés

Connecting, Conversing, Transforming

The Be Strong Families Parent Café program is a nationally recognized peer-to-peer learning process to keep children safe and families strong. Parents and caregivers create safe spaces to explore their strengths and learn from themselves and each other how to use the Strengthening Families Protective Factors with their loved ones. At a café, parents and caregivers talk about the challenges and victories of raising a family. Through individual self-reflection and conversations with others, participants explore their strengths and create strategies from their own wisdom and experiences to help strengthen their families. The experience is empowering, a shift from listening to “experts” to drawing on the wealth of knowledge already in the room.

90by30 is also implementing Be Strong’s “A More Perfect Union” cafés, which invite conversations that connect social justice and parenting. These cafés are also organized around the Protective Factors and allow parents to explore the broader context for parenting in a complicated and often unjust world.

The Eugene and Springfield teams are currently in the pilot phase of bringing online Parent Cafés to Lane County. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our plans have shifted from in-person events to virtual conversations. Thanks to a grant from United Way of Lane County, we’re holding a series of virtual parent cafés in 2021.

If you’d like to get involved with Parent Cafés, email our Eugene team at EugeneRLT@90by30.com or our Springfield team at SpringfieldRLT@90by30.com. We’re looking for people to help organize cafés; to be table hosts during the conversations; and, when in-person events are possible, to help with childcare and other aspects of running a café.