The mission of The Black Parent Initiative (BPI) is to inspire, empower, and mobilize Black parents in hopes of closing the educational achievement gap.

Core Values:

• BPI believes that Black children can learn at high numbers when surrounded by caring, loving, holistic adults.
• BPI believes in the inherent power of African-American parents.
• BPI believes that children are a strong reflection of the communities they reside in.
• BPI believes that viable schools are essential to the economic and social wellbeing of our county, city, and region.
• BPI supports Black churches as active, supportive, forces in the lives of Black families.

The Black Parent Initiative consists of three collaborative efforts, which will work together to provide families with leadership training, social support and academic assistance. These essential services and opportunities respond to needs identified both by national and local research, focus groups which were (conducted by Adam Davis of Davis and Hibbits) in local churches and observation in Portland’s Black community. The three programs are: Parents Network, Social Mentors, and Academic Tutoring.

Leadership Development/Family Engagement: The mission of Parents Network (The Network) is to empower African American parents by providing leadership development, and parental support that promotes and supports greater levels of parental engagement. Over the course of the next year, The Network will work intensively with two churches and broadly with four churches to develop 10 leaders and 20 parent advocates at each church. The goal is to develop a minimum of 50 knowledgeable parents who can advise and support families in working with their children’s schools. Every parent who attends The Network leadership training will be expected to sign BPI’s parent pledge, committing to supporting his or her child in stronger academic achievement. This is a collaborative effort with Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good (MACG) an organization that has a proven track record of working successfully working with church communities to develop targeted campaigns and strong servant focused leaders.

Community Based Mentoring: The mission of Social Mentors is to assist families in achieving their personal goals as productive engaged members of our community. Social Mentors is an intense mentorship program, where trained church members main focus will be to help families engage with their children’s school. Social Mentors will serve as a bridge between school, church, community, and families. Social Mentors will be expected to check on student’s grades, classroom behavior and family life. Social Mentors will be expected to set high standards for students and families and provide support for families to meet and succeed. Social Mentors will conduct themselves in a manner that follows all laws and regulations respecting the separation of church and state. Thanks to Oregon Mentors for helping in the development of the component of Social Mentors.

The mission of Academic Tutoring is to offer culturally competent, high quality academic tutoring to students participating in Black Parent Initiative. A selected group of well-qualified upper level students from Concordia University, Portland will tutor students twice a week and provide students with fun interactive, educational experiences for twice a week for more then two hours at church site throughout the city of Portland. Tutorial sessions will take place Tuesdays and Thursdays, thanks to Concordia University, Portland.