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A Future Design for Equitable Communities

It is ambitious. Crucial. Future-facing but built on decades of best practices. And it leverages the power of the family and education—the foundation for success and the launchpad for dreams.

The National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) has an ambitious vision for the next decade that builds upon the organization’s legacy work and charts a new course. Moving beyond isolated programmatic endeavors, NCFL’s vision will drive work designed to support the establishment of coordinated and aligned family learning systems in communities.

NCFL 60x30 Vision: By 2030, coordinated and aligned family learning systems are established in 60 communities, built with and for families, to increase education and economic outcomes, thereby creating more equitable communities.

To learn more about the family learning systems approach to advancing equity in communities, read NCFL’s new resource.

Family Literacy

Family literacy is a continuum of programs that addresses the multigenerational nature of literacy. These programs integrate (1) interactive literacy activities between parent and child; (2) training in parenting activities; (3) parent or family adult education; and (4) age-appropriate education to prepare children for success in school and life experiences.

Family Engagement

Strong family engagement efforts are designed in partnership with schools, districts, and community-based organizations, and are aimed at building dual capacity of families and educators. At NCFL family engagement programming includes learning opportunities, events, activities, and strategies that are focused on developing oral language and literacy skills, achieving developmental milestones, and supporting child learning outcomes (P-12).

Family Leadership

Family leadership programs at NCFL are strategies and services that improve and enhance the leadership skills of parenting adults and are designed to support families in becoming better engaged advocates for themselves, their children, their families, and communities by making powerful, impactful changes on education issues alongside the systems that serve them.

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NCFL Partners

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Toyota

Toyota, one of the nation's most successful corporations, began a partnership with NCFL in 1991. In addition to a commitment of more than $50 million, Toyota has also contributed a wealth of in-kind support — including advertising, planning and management expertise — to form one of the most progressive corporate/nonprofit partnerships in the nation.

Three major programs have been developed through the Toyota partnership based on the family literacy model of parents and children learning together. These models have influenced federal and state legislation, leveraged local dollars to support family literacy and led to successful programs being replicated across the country.

Read more about Toyota's commitment to communities

William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust

NCFL received its very first donation in 1989 from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust to promote and implement family literacy programming, first in Kentucky and North Carolina and later nationwide. The Kenan Family Literacy Model in part laid the groundwork for 30 years of subsequent family literacy and family learning programming developed by NCFL.

Kenan has continued to support NCFL’s place-based family literacy programs since our inception. Most recently, it has invested in our organization’s Sharon Darling Innovation Fund, which will launch emerging ideas and programmatic evolutions in the multigenerational learning space.

Learn more about the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust

Dollar General Literacy Foundation

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation began partnering with NCFL in 2006. A signature effort of this partnership is the National Literacy Directory, a resource that launched in 2010 and strives to guide potential students and volunteers to literacy services, community education programs, and testing centers in their communities.

The National Literacy Directory contains over 10,000 educational agencies located across the United States and has a dedicated toll-free number to help support those wanting to pursue educational opportunities in their communities.

Dollar General also provides support for development of NCFL’s innovative family learning resources centered on financial literacy and Parent and Child Together (PACT) Time®.

Learn more about the Dollar General Literacy Foundation

PNC Grow Up Great

PNC Grow Up Great believes deeply in the power of high-quality early childhood education and provides innovative opportunities that assist families, educators and community organizations to enhance children's learning and development.

PNC Grow Up Great has partnered with NCFL since 1994, most recently in Louisville, Kentucky, to support Say & Play with Words, our pre-Kindergarten vocabulary-building initiative.

NCFL's work is also featured on the PNC Grow Up Great Lesson Center website. The Lesson Center includes over 100 free, high-quality preschool lesson plans and research-based instructional techniques and strategies. All lesson plans contain Home/School Connections printouts, in English and Spanish, to help families extend and reinforce the learning at home.

Learn more about PNC Grow Up Great

U.S. Department of Education

Initiated through the U.S. Department of Education in 2018, the Statewide Family Engagement Centers (SFEC) program provides 12 grantees and 13 states with five-year, $5 million grants to promote and implement systemic evidenced-based family engagement strategies. NCFL was selected to lead SFECs in two states, Arizona and Nebraska, and is a primary partner for two other SFECs in Kentucky and Maryland/Pennsylvania. 

The SFECs work to support family engagement through state- and local-level agencies while providing both professional development to school districts and direct services to families related to children’s academic outcomes and overall well-being.

Learn more about the U.S. Department of Education

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

NCFL was named a recipient of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s "Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge," which seeks to elevate diverse voices in order to broaden the conversation about the issues inhibiting economic mobility and generate deeper awareness along with actionable understanding. NCFL will develop and launch a podcast series that will highlight the remarkable stories of low-income, diverse families across the U.S. who have improved their communities through Family Service Learning.

Foundation Website