Description
Parent Corps 5-Day Basic Training

National Families in Action (NFIA) won a competitive grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to start and test the Parent Corps in 20 school communities in 9 states between October 2003 and September 2006. A total of 20 Parent Leaders have been recruited, trained, and employed full time to educate the parents in their child’s school and mobilize them into preventing their children from using alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. Some 70 additional Assistant Parent Leaders and Volunteer Parent Leaders have been trained as well.

Certifying Parent Leaders

NFIA will train and certify any parent with a child in school who wishes to serve in the Parent Corps. To bring the Parent Corps to a school, a few things must happen first. 1) The school must raise the additional funds required to support its Parent Leader. 2) The Parent Leader parents must complete NFIA’s Parent Corps Basic Training.

This training is held in Atlanta, Georgia, near NFIA’s headquarters office. Trainees arrive Sunday afternoon or evening. Training begins promptly Monday morning and continues throughout the week, ending at mid-afternoon Friday, so that trainees can return home by Friday evening.

What Happens at Basic Training?

The Parent Corps Basic Training offers a full course of information about the importance of parents, the fact that all children are at risk for substance abuse, how addictive drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, affect the adolescent brain, and how parents can form parent groups to protect their children. The training is completely interactive – trainees form teams, partnerships, and pairs throughout the week to process what they are learning, help each other make meaning of the content, and practice the new skills they will need when they return home to start educating parents and mobilizing them into drug prevention.