Resource: Families Are Important Resources (FAIR) Project

This was a three year project that aimed to look at ways to increase community participation and civic engagement of parents and children. The project used a popular education approach to demystify how systems work and how change happens by capturing the creativity and passion of staff, parents, and children to work on issues such as poverty, housing, and living wage. By following this link to the FAIR project you will gain access to the following:

1. Just the beginning: A short video that introduces you to parents and staff who were a part of the FAIR project and allows you to hear from them about their experiences and learning.
2. FAIR manual: This 98 page document describes some of the learning and activities that were a part of this project including information on how to engage children, parents, and staff to be vital parts of change and hopefully provides insights for us to transform the way we see community participation.
3. Appendices: The 6 appendices include dozens of tools that will help us to benefit from rich experiences of the FAIR project and continue to transform communities to being citizen focused.

Deborah Konecny, a Catalyst worker coop member, was the coordinator of this project and wrote the manual and appendices. All of these tools are free for use as long as the source is acknowledged.