Parent-child Education Program
The principal program AVANCE promotes is the Parent-Child Education Program. This aims to help parents create a cognitively rich environment. Teachers seek to do this by encouraging parents to stimulate their children's development through talking to them, praising them and interacting with the world around them. The New York Times referred to the goal of AVANCE as, "Teaching mothers how to teach their children." The program is structured in two tiers, with the first addressing the children's basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical services. The second stage focusses on the parents' educational needs, where applicable, with the aim of improving the home environment and parents' employment options.
The Parent-Child Education Program consists of weekly three-hour classes that are designed to mirror the local school calendar and comprises curricula based on Play and Toys, Parenting Education, Home Visits and Community Resource Awareness. The average participant in the program is a low-income Hispanic mother in her mid-twenties, with 2 – 3 children. However, it also includes fathers, grandparents and primary guardians or caregivers of children up to three years of age. The majority of participants possess no higher than a ninth-grade education and limited or no work experience. A core tenet of the program is to provide practical support in order to encourage parental participation by arranging transport to and from program services, providing free meals and employing bilingual staff from the same communities as participants. Individuals are not charged for participating in the program.
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