First 5 Fresno County (F5FC) will continue to invest in the literacy and education of children aged 0-5 and their parents in the refugee community at FIRM. FIRM will continue the highly successful Family Literacy program and will focus the program on Hmong and Lao children and families. The program takes place in FIRM’s family learning center and works to improve the early learning and development of literacy skills through several key approaches. The Family Literacy Program will operate Monday, Wednesday and Friday through a morning and afternoon session on each day!
F5FC has also invested into an exciting program called the Multi-Ethnic In-Home Visitation and Parent Education Program. This program will utilize an in-home visitation approach to assist parents in engaging their children in activities that improve their early learning and development. The program will provide these services to the Slavic, Hmong, Lao and Cambodian communities in Fresno. Parents will also participate in monthly workshops in their own languages and have the option to be part of parent support groups. We are looking forward to seeing this program implemented and in learning best practices as we serve children across four different cultures! There are not many programs like this that exist and we hope to become a national model for this work!
FIRM would like to thank F5FC for their investment into communities that are often left out of the conversation. Without F5FC, there would simply not be services for the refugee community and their children aged 0-5! We look forward to many more years of partnership in the future and to changing hundreds of children’s lives through these essential program opportunities.