Why parental involvement is key to a child’s health

by David Bass | Apr 12, 2023

Why parental involvement is key to a child’s health

Key Points

Parental involvement makes a big difference in children’s development.
Students with involved parents have better attendance and behavior, get better grades, demonstrate better social skills and adapt better to school.
Parents need access to tools, which is why we are launching Raising Highly Capable Kids (RHCK) to assist parents in the daily efforts of child-rearing and to increase childhood resilience and academic achievement.

“The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day,” said chemist and author O.A. Battista.

This simple statement communicates a powerful truth about the welfare of children—that parental involvement makes a world of difference. We tend to know this instinctively, but it’s good to be reminded from time to time. And it’s crucial to learn new ways to give parents the tools they need to succeed with parenting their kids.

“As a community leader and family life educator, I work with families often,” says Joyce Mayberry, vice president of family for the Georgia Center for Opportunity. “With all of those interactions, you begin to notice consistencies. One that I notice across all demographics is that the youth who have parents involved in their lives are successful in almost every aspect.”

Why parental involvement matters

With that being said, it’s necessary to define what “parent involvement” actually means. The National Parent Teacher Association defines “parent involvement” as the participation of parents in every facet of children’s education and development, from birth to adulthood, recognizing that parents are the primary influence in children’s lives.

Studies have shown that parent involvement has a significant impact on a child’s academic success, behavior, and overall well-being. According to the National PTA, when parents are involved, their children are more likely to:

- Earn higher grades and test scores
- Have better attendance
- Be more motivated and engaged in school
- Have fewer behavioral issues
- Graduate high school and attend college

The Annie E. Casey Foundation concludes that students “whose parents stay involved in school have better attendance and behavior, get better grades, demonstrate better social skills and adapt better to school.”

In addition, parent involvement has been linked to better communication and relationships between parents and children.

“The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day,” said chemist and author O.A. Battista.

Fostering better parental involvement in Georgia

We can all agree that there are several factors that contribute to ensuring that our children present their best selves. We at Georgia Center for Opportunity have launched a new parenting program called Raising Highly Capable Kids.

Raising Highly Capable Kids (RHCK) is a 13-week evidence-based parenting program developed to build stronger families by empowering parents with the confidence, tools, and skills they need to raise healthy, caring, and responsible children.

The program increases parents’ knowledge and skill level of the essential building blocks every child needs—the 40 Developmental Assets from Search Institute, which are proven to increase childhood resilience and academic achievement.

The lessons are available to schools, nonprofits, churches, and other organizations focused on helping to build stronger families for Georgia — and ultimately stronger communities.

GCO is facilitating course offerings for interested parents who want to learn more effective skills and strategies as they raise their children.

What’s next?

We’re still looking for partners across Georgia to bring the RHCK program to parents. We are starting an interest list for local partners who could hold a class and for adults who might be interested in taking it.

If you are interested in referring contacts or getting involved in other ways, contact Joyce Mayberry, JoyceM@foropportunity.org, to start the conversation.

Let’s transform parenting in Georgia! Recapping the Raising Highly Capable Kids kickoff event

by David Bass | Mar 15, 2023

Let’s transform parenting in Georgia! Recapping the Raising Highly Capable Kids kickoff event

Key Points

Positive relationships impact the opportunities and potential future for every child.
GCO is partnering with RezilientKids to bring the evidence-based program, Raising Highly Capable Kids to the Gwinnett area.
GCO is recruiting partners who are willing to local partners who could hold a class and for adults who might be interested in taking it.

Nothing has more impact on the life of a child than positive relationships.

That basic truth was the cornerstone of a kickoff event March 9 to launch the Raising Highly Capable Kids (RHCK) program across Georgia.

We’re thrilled to report that 43 people representing more than 20 community organizations attended the event at First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville. The kickoff helped us build an inaugural network of RHCK trainers and liaisons who will help the Georgia Center for Opportunity (GCO) team bring the program to communities.

Attendees at the kickoff event heard from Angela Davis, regional representative for the Southeast region for RezilientKids, the national nonprofit that publishes the RHCK program. She shared how the program will work in Georgia.

Angela Davis of RezilientKids shares the power of Raising Highly Capable Kids with Gwinnett-area leaders.

What is RHCK?

GCO has partnered with RezilientKids to present the program to adults across Georgia. RHCK is a 13-week evidence-based parenting program developed to build stronger families by empowering parents with the confidence, tools, and skills they need to raise healthy, caring, and responsible children.

The program increases parents’ knowledge and skill level of the essential building blocks every child needs — the 40 Development Assets from Search Institute, which are proven to increase childhood resiliency and academic achievement.

The lessons are available to schools, nonprofits, churches, and other organizations focused on helping to build stronger families for Georgia — and ultimately stronger communities. Through a community grant issued by RezilientKidz, GCO is facilitating course offerings for interested parents who want to learn more effective skills and strategies as they raise their children.

What’s next?

We’re still looking for partners across Georgia to bring the RHCK program to parents. We are starting an interest list for local partners who could hold a class and for adults who might be interested in taking it.

If you are interested in referring contacts or getting involved in other ways, contact Joyce Mayberry, JoyceM@foropportunity.org, to start the conversation.

Announcing the Raising Highly Capable Kids program in Georgia

by David Bass | Feb 6, 2023

Resilient Kids raising highly capable kids

Announcing the Raising Highly Capable Kids program in Georgia

Key Points

Georgia Center for Opportunity has partnered with a national nonprofit, RezilientKidz, to present the Raising Highly Capable Kids parenting program to adults across Georgia.
Raising Highly Capable Kids is a 13-week evidence-based parenting program developed to build stronger families by empowering parents with the confidence, tools, and skills they need to raise healthy, caring, and responsible children.
GCO is holding a vision casting session on March 9, 2023, and if you represent a church or nonprofit that wants to get involved, you’re invited. (See below)

We’ve got some exciting news to share about what’s ahead in 2023! The Georgia Center for Opportunity has partnered with a national nonprofit, RezilientKidz, to present the Raising Highly Capable Kids parenting program to adults across Georgia. The program is specially designed to equip parents to address common child issues in our state.

Here’s a quick rundown on the new curriculum. Raising Highly Capable Kids is a 13-week evidence-based parenting program developed to build stronger families by empowering parents with the confidence, tools, and skills they need to raise healthy, caring, and responsible children. The program increases parents’ knowledge and skill level of the essential building blocks every child needs — the 40 Developmental Assets from Search Institute, which are proven to increase childhood resiliency and academic achievement.

The lessons are available to schools, nonprofits, churches, and other organizations focused on helping to build stronger families for Georgia — and ultimately stronger communities. Through a community grant issued by RezilientKidz, GCO is facilitating course offerings for interested parents who want to learn more effective skills and strategies as they raise their children.

“It’s not just about creating resilient kids. It’s about creating resilient communities,” says Joyce Mayberry, vice president of family at GCO.

Today, kids in Georgia are facing high levels of “at-risk behavior” that sets them up for struggles in one or more areas of their lives. Ultimately, they could face unfavorable outcomes that affect them long-term — possibly for the rest of their lives. The Raising Highly Capable Kids program teaches parents the skills required to help keep their children from engaging in these risky and destructive behaviors.

To make Raising Highly Capable Kids successful, we’re depending on help from communities statewide. Here’s who we’re looking for:

School leaders to provide local parents with the tools they need to help their children succeed academically.
Church leaders to offer courses in their communities, with the goals of increasing local involvement and reducing risky behaviors.
Nonprofit leaders and organizations to host community-based classes that ultimately reduce family and emotional stress by helping kids avoid destructive patterns.
Donors to enable these leaders and organizations to offer classes for parents statewide.

Ultimately, Raising Highly Capable Kids is about helping our young people thrive and live their best possible lives.

“We want youth to be seen, heard, and valued. Every child,” Mayberry says. “Then they will show up as their best selves.”

It’s not just about creating resilient kids. It’s about creating resilient communities.

Joyce Mayberry

VP of Family

It’s not just about creating resilient kids. It’s about creating resilient communities.

Joyce Mayberry

VP of Family

A look inside the Raising Highly Capable Kids 13-week curriculum

The Raising Highly Capable Kids curriculum is built around the Search Institute’s 40 developmental assets, compiled from decades of research involving more than 5 million young people. Parents who attend training will learn from curriculum materials built on the foundation of the developmental assets. Children won’t attend these classes, as they’re geared exclusively toward adults.

The course is split into thirteen weeks worth of materials for parents and ranges from self assessment of parenting skills and history to monitoring social media and even building a family identity.

How you can help

We need community support — which means we need you! We’re looking for trainers, location providers, wraparound services, and individuals and organizations willing to fund the initiative.

GCO is holding a vision casting session on March 9, 2023, and if you represent a church or nonprofit that wants to get involved, you’re invited. During that time, we’ll gather all participating organizations in one room to learn more about the The Raising Highly Capable Kids curriculum as a unit. Please register for the event here.

After the March 9 event, we’ll begin training for those individuals who signed up to launch a class. Training will take place in one four-hour session on March 25, 2023. Throughout the process, GCO will be facilitating, consulting, and ensuring all participating volunteers have the books and training materials they need to be successful.

Contact Joyce Mayberry at joycem@foropportunity.org if you’d like to volunteer time or facilities. Alternatively, if you know someone who would be a great trainer, share your referrals with us. We’re looking forward to hearing from you and kicking off this new initiative!

Welcome lawmakers to Atlanta for the opening of the 2023 session

by Buzz Brockway | Jan 9, 2023

Welcome lawmakers to Atlanta for the opening of the 2023 session

The Georgia Center for Opportunity issued the following media statement welcoming lawmakers to Atlanta for the opening of the 2023 session of the Legislature on Jan. 9.”We’re excited to see what the new session holds for our state, and we stand ready to assist lawmakers in passing an agenda that serves all Georgians,” said Buzz Brockway, executive vice president of public policy for GCO. “GCO has served our state for nearly 25 years, and has dedicated itself to expanding opportunity by helping increase access to quality education, fulfilling work, and healthy family life. We know that by addressing these critical barriers we can help pull communities out of poverty and expand opportunity to every community in our state.”As an organization, GCO stands ready to provide resources and education to lawmakers on the impact policies have on underserved communities and the opportunities available (and not available) to all Georgians. Here are three key area:

Eliminating benefits cliffs

- Some workers find themselves torn between taking steps toward a more secure future, but ultimately forced into making decisions that traps them into long-term dependence on government benefits. These are known as benefits cliffs. We’ll be working to educate lawmakers on this reality and propose reforms to ensure all workers have the opportunity to climb the economic ladder. Learn more

Expanding educational freedom

- We are still uncovering the extent of learning loss experienced by kids during the pandemic. We know that expansion of educational opportunityis a key solution to this problem. Passing Education Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs, will be a big step forward in helping all Georgia students achieve their full potential.

Promoting an anti-poverty agenda

- GCO is part of the Alliance for Opportunity, a three state network of policy organizations built around furthering an anti-poverty agenda. We will be working with lawmakers to promote solutions to poverty that lift Georgians up into the middle class.

A Georgia Center for Opportunity agenda for 2023

by David Bass | Jan 9, 2023

A Georgia Center for Opportunity agenda for 2023

Key Points

Our primary education-centric emphasis will be on passing legislation for Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs).
Over the course of 2023, we’ll focus on working in more schools statewide.
Our team is excited to broaden BETTER WORK’s reach so this highly successful program can continue to nurture, jump-start, and inspire those who need it most.

As the new year dawns, we’re excited about everything we were able to accomplish with your support in 2022. But our focus is also forward, and our team is excited to expand our growth and reach into Georgia communities and beyond in 2023. Today, we’re outlining our 2023 agenda, so let’s jump right in!

Policy

Our primary education-centric emphasis will be on passing legislation for Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs). But we’ll also be advocating for reforms to public school funding formulas to ensure that money follows each child to the school their parents or guardians have chosen. We’ll also support legislation to expand the Tuition Tax Credit Scholarship program.

Here are some of the other important areas where we’ll be focusing:

- - - Benefits Cliffs Reform Task Force: We’ll ask the legislature to appoint a joint House/Senate committee to investigate and seek out reform ideas for the welfare system’s disincentives to marriage and work.
    - Welfare/Workforce Integration: This is a critical piece of trigger legislation that would integrate Georgia and federal workforce development services and welfare benefits. Modeled after work done in Utah, integration will take effect when Congress passes legislation that allows it.
    - Prisoner Reentry: We will advocate for legislation that requires licensing boards to offer returning citizens the opportunity to get an occupational license upon release from prison. (These licenses would not be related to the crimes they were convicted for.) Based on our earlier successes changing the law, licensing boards are meant to be doing this already. But we’ve received word that they aren’t following the intended procedures. This new law would give returning citizens the right to appeal denials issued by a licensing board.

“There’s much work to be done in the new year, but we’re ready to rise to the challenges.”

Family

Strengthening families through better education, job opportunities, and legislation is at the heart of what we do. Many of our initiatives result in the establishment of new families, as well as adding multiple layers of stability to new and existing families. We’ll address those initiatives in other sections of this post, but for our purposes here, we’ll talk about our push to keep kids in school.

Over the course of 2023, we’ll focus on working in more schools statewide. We’ll accomplish this through our Raising Highly Capable Kids curriculum. Raising Highly Capable Kids equips parents with 40 essential developmental assets, which have been shown to improve children’s academic performance dramatically. As our reach expands, we’ll zero in on serving students from Title I schools who are at risk of dropping out.

BETTER WORK

The BETTER WORK initiative serves to help unemployed and underemployed individuals find gainful employment that helps them feel fulfilled and successful. BETTER WORK ultimately contributes to better long-term financial stability for individuals and families in Georgia. We’re committed to increasing our efforts in the new year.

When it comes to the BETTER WORK program, we have two primary goals in 2023:

Growing our community program reach in Columbus and Gwinnett counties. We’re aiming for a combined total of 1,000 job candidates in 2023. Part of this initiative includes optimizing our mentors’ effectiveness through additional training and content. We’ll also be expanding training options for job candidates to help them prepare for the job market.
Using the lessons we’ve learned from implementing BETTER WORK and creating a replicable model we can take into other communities.

Our team is excited to broaden BETTER WORK’s reach so this highly successful program can continue to nurture, jump-start, and inspire those who need it most.

Education

Throughout 2023, the Georgia Center for Opportunity will work toward equipping Georgia parents with essential tools and skills for finding the best learning opportunities and environments for their children. We’ll also assist them with learning how to access funding and scholarships that will help to pay for their children’s education. These combined efforts will provide parents with a more substantial voice as they advocate for better educational options.

The Georgia General Assembly’s passage of House Bill 517, effectively raising the state Tax Credit Scholarship Program cap from $100 million to $120 million per year. In addition, HB517 removes the automatic program sunset and doubles how much individuals, LLCs, and S Corporations can contribute. While we appreciate the marginal gain of $20 million and the strengthened tax-credit program, we would have liked to see the Senate raise the cap to the House’s proposed $200 million. Hopefully, in the next legislative session, the cap will be increased further.

Still, thousands of children in Georgia will benefit from this broadened access to high-quality education. Regardless of our organizational stance on the finalized legislation, we celebrate the educational opportunities these children will enjoy.

Alliance for Opportunity

In the coming year, we’ll be working alongside our partners in Louisiana and Texas to forward our joint effort to improve our respective states’ employment, welfare systems, and criminal justice policies. We’ll focus on partnering with our Congressional representatives to advocate for and advance legislation that would give states the ability to reform their workforce development and welfare programs. Ultimately, our goal is to help those programs work together seamlessly, without discouraging marriage or gainful employment.

Wrapping Up

There’s much work to be done in the new year, but we’re ready to rise to the challenges. As 2023 unfolds, we remain dedicated to supporting our Georgia communities and beyond, going above and beyond to help improve policy and strengthen families, careers, and educational opportunities. Once again, we’re grateful for your support!

A look back at everything we accomplished together in 2022

by David Bass | Dec 19, 2022

A look back at everything we accomplished together in 2022

As 2022 comes to a close, let’s take a moment to share some of the many accomplishments the Georgia Center for Opportunity achieved with your help this year. Each of these wins contributes to our enduring legacy of helping fellow Georgians live a better life through the power of work, education, and family.

While we’re proud of the year’s progress, we’re also incredibly grateful for your support. Let’s take a look at what we’ve done together.

Work

BETTER WORK is a core part of the GCO’s mission to help vulnerable populations gain the skills needed to thrive in a job and a career. In 2022, we made big strides forward in growing this program.

Our BETTER WORK chapters in Gwinnett County and Columbus experienced significant growth this year. Over 400 people applied to the programs, and we recruited 95 employer partners and 42 mentors. We also began offering on-site service at local cooperative ministries.

Dovetailing with our mission to help our neighbors thrive through work, we seek to reform the social safety-net system to ensure that it doesn’t punish people for working. A large part of this has been through our work on benefits cliffs, which unfairly punish people for moving up the economic ladder. On this front, we rolled 12 states into the program at BenefitsCliffs.org, which now covers one-third of the U.S. population. We also presented to national audiences on benefits cliffs: SNAP congressional testimony, the American Legislative Exchange Council, State Policy Network annual meeting, the Heritage Foundation, True Charity Summit, and the Kentucky legislature benefits cliffs joint committee.

We launched a project in Missouri and North Carolina to advance social safety-net reforms in those states. Additionally, we recruited a congressional sponsor to introduce a bill allowing all states to integrate workforce development into their welfare programs. Both BETTER WORK and our benefits cliffs work are making an impact on a national scale, and we anticipate building more momentum in the coming years.

Education

Expanding opportunity necessarily includes greater access to better education, which directly leads to better careers. During the 2022 session of the Georgia Legislature, the GCO team successfully advocated for a bill that expanded the tuition tax credit scholarship by $20 million dollars. The result: an additional 4,000+ students now have access to this important program.

We also backed a bill that would have created Promise Scholarship Accounts, which would have offered families up to $6,000 a year for approved education expenses. Unfortunately, this bill was voted down in committee, but we are optimistic similar legislation will be passed in the upcoming 2023 session. To advocate for the bill, a GCO marketing campaign resulted in 7,573 calls to lawmakers in support of the bill and 1,050 messages across 21 districts.

“Each of these wins contributes to our enduring legacy of helping fellow Georgians live a better life through the power of work, education, and family.”

Family

A great education and involvement in meaningful work are not sufficient. We also need healthy relationships in order to thrive. That’s why another part of GCO’s mission is to strengthen couples and families. On that front, we recruited more than 500 people to participate in relationship-enrichment training, and we offered the classes in seven public schools and seven nonprofit partner agencies. University of Georgia assessments continue to show our programs improve knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors — all best future predictors of improved relational health.

Looking Ahead to 2023

As 2023 approaches, we’re so excited for what the future holds. With another year comes new opportunities to help not only our fellow Georgians, but people across America to find better work, better education, and stronger family relationships. Again, we thank you for your generous support and look forward to what unfolds in the New Year.