We're proud to share the story of PAN Cymru — Be Strong Families' first international affiliate. What began as a small coalition in Neath Port Talbot in 2020 has grown into a national movement, with Welsh Government funding and parents leading the way. This is how they did it.

In 2019, BSF trained 1,500 people across 25 states, collected feedback from nearly 2,500 Café participants, and welcomed new Certified Training Partners. A look back at a landmark year for the Parent Café movement.

United Planning Organization (UPO), based in Washington D.C., are dedicated to being change agents by offering services in early education, youth, community wellness, and more to the community that surrounds them. UPO shares what happened when they brought Parent Cafés to their community — including 98% of participants saying they'd recommend it to a friend and an Early Intervention Program that liked it so much they adopted the model.

Be Strong Families has been hosting Parent Cafés and teaching others how to host them since we began in 2012. Our original Parent Café deck of questions was bilingual, in Spanish and English. As we've evolved, we've worked with communities to translate Be Strong Families Parent Cafés into other languages and to develop Parent Café decks specific to cultural needs.

As a privileged white woman in a position of power and authority, committed to diversity, inclusion and radical co-creation, CEO Co-founder and CEO, Kathyn, was trying to sit this one out. “Let actions speak louder than words,” she thought. But watching the "parent engagement through a lens of equity" conversation cycle through the field for 30 years without moving the needle? Her response breaks down what economic, political, and social equity actually look like in practice — and why BSF stopped treating them as aspirational and started treating them as operational.

Three generations, two new babies, and a decade of camping trips Up North. Around a campfire with her daughters-in-law, Robyn Harvey realized the Parent Café agreements had quietly become part of how she shows up for her family. No formal Café required.

When her son walked across the stage at his college graduation, Dena Chapman exhaled — for him and for every Black and Brown young man who never got the chance. Dena’s reflection on "the talk," A More Perfect Union, and what it means to parent in a divided America is a powerful case for transformative conversation.

As the creators of the Parent Cafés, Be Strong Families is excited to announce that the California Department of Education recently added “expanding parental knowledge of child development through Parent Cafés” as one of the top strategies under their nearly $11 million federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B—5), previously announced on January 16, 2019. This announcement follows the inauguration of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris as California’s first Surgeon General. We are longtime admirers of Dr. Burke Harris’s work, including her 2015 TED Talk, “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime.”

Two hours into a Parent Café on trusting relationships, two participants remarked it was the first time in weeks they had truly felt heard. A facilitator from The Matthews House in Colorado reflects on what safety and belonging make possible when parents are finally given space to tell their stories.