The Strong Roots Parent and Caregiver Program was designed to enrich the knowledge and skills of Black minority and immigrant parents and guardians in the community, particularly around the areas of racial and ethnic identity and racial socialization. The program was created in response to the needs voiced by children participating in the Kulula Mentoring and Tutoring Program. When parents and caregivers are more secure in their identities as racial beings, have a greater awareness of the ways in which race, discrimination, and oppression operate in theirs and their children's lives, and have the skills to communicate and respond to their children, they will be better equipped to aid their children in the development and integration of their own racial and ethnic identities. Additionally, parents and caregivers will be better positioned to provide the support and solutions to make meaning of, integrate, and confront experiences of racism intra-personally, interpersonally, and systemically.
Strong Roots meets with parents or caregivers and their children for two hours bi-monthly in the Coconut Grove area, a historic and predominately Black community in Miami, Florida. Parents progress through the empirically-based Strong Roots manual, while children participate in an equivalent themed Children's Branch program. The program is based on collaborative learning and facilitator-led discussion based on topics from three main areas of the program: (1) well-being, (2) empowering racial identity, and (3) parent-child communication. The program is maintained through the efforts of volunteers in conjunction with the CRECER team.
