Resiliency Kits

By Lorelei Swanson, CFEC Regional Liaison

In my role as the Upstate Regional Family Engagement Liaison, I seek to promote community partnerships that support families and student development. I recently became involved with Empower Oconee SC (EOSC). This group partners with the United Way of Oconee (UWO) and is funded by Children’s Trust of SC to empower community members to collaboratively build health, well-being, and resilience for all children and families in Oconee County.

We created resiliency kits for families with children in elementary school and distributed 400 kits in five    neighborhoods in Oconee County. Included was a guide for families to engage in fun activities with their child using the items in the kit to foster academic achievement and development. We created a QR code to place on our CFEC bookmarks, which linked directly to the EOSC family engagement activities. UWO was pleased with the response and requested 200 additional bookmarks for their Back to School Give Away the following week.

Building on this success, I partnered with Teresa Phillips, Anderson School District Two (ASD2) District Contact and Director of Project AWARE - a
five-million-dollar, five-year federal grant funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. ASD2 and CFEC are teaming together to create resiliency kits that focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) and family engagement. ASD2 purchased supplies and SEL books from the list developed by Tamara Cox, librarian atWren High School in ASD1.This book list features SELbooks for all grade levels representing diverse backgrounds in all five competencies identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. In addition to creating family engagement activities that foster SEL, CFEC purchased sidewalk chalk and Playdoh to be included in the kits.

Over 400 SEL kits will be distributed in the Belton and Honea Path communities in the fall and spring of the 2020-21 school year. We are scheduling the distribution of the kits to coincide with existing community events and inviting area schools to participate. We want to communicate to families the crucial role they play in supporting and promoting the social and emotional growth of their children, while emphasizing that social and emotional growth and development lays a firm foundation for academic achievement and ensures the success for students in college and career readiness.

These resiliency kits are aligned with CFEC’s mission and demonstrate the power of forming school-family-community partnerships to foster the academic and developmental growth of ALL students.