Family Focused Organizing is COFI’s unique approach to community organizing and leadership development.

COFI began with a vision of engaging parents – particularly mothers and grandmothers – as a vital voice in school, community and broader social justice organizing work.

In Family Focused Organizing, COFI reaches low-income parents – including recent immigrants, single parents, grandparents raising grandchildren and TANF recipients. COFI develops new leaders and engages them in action campaigns to transform policies and institutions that impact their lives and the lives of their children and families.

Family Focused Organizing emphasizes the interconnection between personal struggles and broader community issues and builds capacity for leaders to address these issues at both a personal level and through public action. Parent leaders participate in a multi-step process of training and leadership development, team building, and action.

Through our model and programs, COFI offers a comprehensive, layered, and strategic approach that is successfully building a new grassroots voice for parents and families.

In partnership with other local community organizations, social service agencies, schools and institutions, COFI has trained more than 2200 parents as school, community and citywide leaders using this model.

COFI also offers training for organizers and trainers who want to learn the Family Focused Organizing model and implement it in their own schools and communities. Through this training program, COFI has trained over 85 leaders and staff of 40 different organizations in the model.