[LEBANON, PA] – Be the One Parenting Class, a partnership between Lebanon Family Health Services (LFHS) and Domestic Violence Intervention (DVI) of Lebanon County, has been awarded a 2022 DomesticShelters.org Purple Ribbon Award for Outstanding Community Presentation or Education as judged by a national panel of respected professionals from the domestic violence field.
Be the One is a homegrown parenting class developed and piloted from 2017 to 2019. Course developers at LFHS and DVI believe parents are most appropriate to be the one stable, caring adult needed to build resilience in the lives of their children, but recognize parents don’t always possess the skills and supports needed for success. So Be the One was borne from a set of guiding principles that form the foundation for the course content and the process used to facilitate learning:
- Relationships with caring, responsive adults and early positive experiences build strong brain architecture for children.
- Significant stress from ongoing hardship or threat disrupts the biological foundations of learning, behavior, and health, with lifelong consequences.
- Providing the right ingredients for healthy development from the start produces better outcomes than trying to fix problems later.
“We started recognizing that the curriculum we were using just wasn’t addressing the trauma that parents in the class had experienced in their own lives. So we tag-teamed with DVI and created one that would,” said Lebanon Family Health Services CEO Kim Kreider Umble.
“Be the One is an example of how local professionals came together to make and offer something that works for local parents right here in Lebanon County,” added Mike Ritter, deputy director of DVI and co-creator of Be the One.
Registration for upcoming free Be the One sessions can be found on the LFHS website.
2022 marks the second year of the Purple Ribbon Awards presented by Theresa’s Fund, honoring the countless heroes of the domestic violence movement, including advocates, programs, shelters, survivors, and members of the community support system. Winners include entries from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Theresa’s Fund is a 501(c)(3) organization that has been deeply committed and involved in preventing violence against women since 1992. Theresa’s Fund invested the better part of its first 20 years grant-making and fundraising in its home state of Arizona to build shelter capacity, then launching the international website DomesticShelters.org in 2014. DomesticShelters.org is one of the fastest-growing websites on the topic of domestic violence.
$30,000 worth of grants will be awarded to stand-out Purple Ribbon Award recipients during a virtual celebration of all winners on September 21, 2022. The celebration will follow the Purple Ribbon Awards Inspire Webinar, a free-to-attend virtual conference where winners will tell their success stories, share advice for other domestic violence professionals and celebrate the work being done to help victims and survivors of abuse.
Registration to attend the Inspire Webinar and/or Purple Ribbon Awards Celebration is now open at www.purpleribbonawards.org.
Author: Amaury Abreu
