FY25 Parent Mentor Program Application Coming Soon!
Bring the Parent Mentor Program to Your Community
The Parent Engagement Institute (PEI), a partnership between Palenque LSNA and Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), is looking for community organizations and school partnerships in Illinois to apply to start the Parent Mentor Program in their local public schools during the 2024-2025 school year.
Info session:
Friday, April 12, 2024 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
Application link:
(Coming soon)
What is the Parent Mentor Program?
Parent mentors help address persistent equity gaps in their own children's schools by volunteering in classrooms for two hours/day for at least 200 hours. The parent mentors access weekly professional development on instructional practices, leadership, and career opportunities, mentoring from a teacher, and stipends. Parent mentors support each other within their cohort to pursue their dreams and unite the school community for long-term change.
What will the grant pay for?
We seek community partners ready to collaborate with their public schools in Illinois to implement the Parent Mentor Program to accomplish these goals. We anticipate adding 3-4 new partner organizations to lead the Parent Mentor Program in their communities, each starting with an average of 2 public schools. SWOP will provide a contract of a minimum of $40,000 per school. Partners and schools may choose cohorts of 6 or 8 Parent Mentors. Contracts are for one year only. Funding is through the Illinois State Board of Education.
How will the Parent Engagement Institute support us?
Our relationship is more than a grant. Based on over 25 years of running local Parent Mentor programs, Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) and SWOP have developed the Parent Engagement Institute (PEI) to coach other community organizations and school districts to replicate the Parent Mentor model and join our network. PEI provides an orientation, a yearlong calendar of professional development workshops for partner organizations, a peer support network, site-specific coaching, and the program documents needed to help make sure your program is successful and true to the original values.
Who is eligible?
Our priority will be partnering with community-based organizations rooted in Black communities, severely under-resourced school districts, and/or rural communities. Must be in Illinois.
What is the timeline?
More detailed information coming soon.
It was bringing out the best in that person.
I came in with ... I wouldn’t say low expectations, but I was like, ‘Okay. It’s another training and it’s five days.’ But that first day, it just ... it set the tone to let me know this was not the usual training. It was something that was meant to really bring out the best in parent mentors in their individuality- aside from being the mom, from being the wife, the spouse. It was bringing out the best in that person. Allowing them to be able to acknowledge their wants and needs as far as their goals are concerned, all the while, being that person in place to assist and be of meaningful assistance to teachers in the classrooms.”
Candace Williams
Executive Director
Rural Community Alliance in Arkansas
Training Options
What We Offer
We regularly open our Parent Engagement Institute “Train-the-Trainers” to organizers, parent leaders, and educators from around the country and world. Your team would have the opportunity to sit in circle with parent leaders steeped in this work, drawing on our network’s collective wisdom and mutual support. Check our calendar for upcoming dates and topics of Train-the-Trainers: Train-the-Trainer 101; Instructional Practices (TIP TOP); and Restorative Justice.
We can share multiple levels of multilingual curriculum, plus program materials and evaluation tools.
Our Parent Engagement Institute coaching staff have decades of experience collaborating with partners in urban, suburban, rural, Black, Latinx, and diverse communities. Most of our Parent Engagement Institute coaching staff have been Parent Mentors, parent mentor coordinators, and community organizers, and so they approach the work with multiple perspectives.
If you are in the process of building support from multiple stakeholders, we can offer site visits and remote presentations.
If you are based in Illinois, be sure to join our mailing list to hear about state grant opportunities.
What We Ask
We ask for real partnership and collaboration. We care about program fidelity. We care that your Parent Mentor Program is consistent not only in program components but in values and spirit. And, we want to learn from your innovations as you adapt this model to your context.
The Parent Engagement Institute is a partnership between Logan Square Neighborhood Association and Southwest Organizing Project, two grassroots community organizations. We are doing this work, walking this walk, every day in our own neighborhoods. We try to strike a balance between sharing our model with the rest of the world and continuing to stay rooted in our own local organizing.
Therefore, we ask partners to sign a contract with us before entering a training or site visit. We ask for $5000 per school, although we are open to discussions based on the size of your organization and the scope of what you are trying to accomplish. This contract would include:
Registration for 2 staff at our “Train the Trainer 101” 5-Day training (typically in September)
Training curriculum, program materials, and evaluation tools, available in English, Spanish, and Chinese
A designated Parent Engagement Institute coach, who will guide you through initial planning, check in with you at least once per month, and provide occasional remote trainings with your cohort.
Please contact us to set up a phone meeting to learn more. We would love to find a way for you to join our Parent Mentor family.
They become school experts.
The single most important reason why we knew we wanted to have and host The Parent Mentor Program was to address the disconnect between immigrants in the suburban community from their schools. Most of the Parent Mentors are stay-at-home moms and maybe moms who work the second shift. They start quiet, shy, a little nervous. For a lot of them this is their first time being at the school outside of their children and being directly in the classroom. By the end of the year the Parent Mentors are experts on their school and it’s really cool to see that.
Elizabeth Cervantes
Co-Director
Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project