Families of Color Seattle

FOCS PARENT GROUPS: Free-of-cost, facilitated and intentional gatherings that increase parenting skills and provide a space to discuss identity, race, culture, and belonging. Our parent groups focus on myriad topics relevant to newborns (0 to 6 months), waddlers (6 months to 3 years), and families of color who have children across a wide range of ages and who share an affinity identity or experience. participants in each expecting parents, newborn and waddler group, and 10-20 participants in each affinity group. Meetings are held in-person (as COVID-19 protocols allow) or virtually. Facilitators are trained parent educators who are BIPOC parents with lived experiences specific to the group: They have had children in the age group or the affinity experience being served. We currently have 14 types of FOCS parent groups dedicated to specific identities, including Black mothers, Indigenous parents, QTPOC (queer, transgender people of color) parents, single parents, and parents of BIPOC children with disabilities, and are always open to adding more as community needs arise. Our programs honor the unique experiences that BIPOC parents share and nurture safer spaces where they can build community. We also offer dialogue workshops to parents, providers, and educators to help grow their understanding of systemic racism and create inclusive and anti-racist learning spaces for children.

FOCS SYSTEMS CHANGE: Work seeks to dismantle systemic racism by partnering with families, educators, community and advocacy groups as well as elected officials and policymakers to transform racial inequality into a better world for our children. We offer workshops to promote institutional change, partner with organizations aligned with our families' interests, and expand on advocacy issues based on community feedback. We lead interactive dialogue workshops for a wide range of participants including public and private educators and staff, PTAs and parent-led groups, student groups (customized to be developmentally appropriate for various age groups from preschool to college), as well as corporate, government, and nonprofit staff and boards.We also leverage our position as a resource for parents of color in the region to educate and mobilize around policy issues that affect our communities.

FOCS FAMILY PROGRAMS: Community-curated regular gatherings that set apart FOCS from other mainstream parent groups or peer support organizations. We intentionally create events for BIPOC families to connect with a larger, compassionate community. The gatherings offer children's activities, feature cultural bearers, guest artists, highlight experts and speakers of color to further dialogue on pressing topics, and generally offer safe space to engage in ways BIPOC families often cannot in a majority white city.