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A New Tool for Positive Family Dialogue

December 30, 2014

 

For more than 21 years, Project Success has worked tirelessly to help students plan and prepare for the future they imagine after high school. And for the past several years, we have been exploring ways in which that deeply relational work can translate into a digital environment.  We were thrilled when FamDoo, a new mobile phone tool for families, approached us to do that very thing…help students take practical steps towards imagining and planning their future via a mobile application.

The FamDoo app not only provides the perfect platform for our Project Success curriculum, but it also strongly encourages important conversations to happen between parent and child.

We often hear from parents:

How can I connect with my kids?”

“How do I start a good conversation with them about their future?”

“How do I break through and get them to talk with me?”

Parents are always looking for new and better ways to connect with their tween and teenage kids.  The new FamDoo “BE” application allows us to have impact in a new, positive way for families with our proven curriculum.

Working closely with the FamDoo staff, we have translated 9 of our Project Success classroom activities for a digital experience.  These activities have been tested and used with 100,000 Project Success alumni in the Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools.

Currently, more than 12,000 Twin Cities public school students every year develop strong relationships with a Project Success Facilitator, who leads goal-setting workshops in their Language Arts/English classes once a month. That personal relationship is equally, if not more, important than the fun and inventive activities we plan. So, an essential ingredient to building Project Success content with FamDoo online was translating those relationships into a digital format.

To achieve this goal, we incorporated our Facilitators into the mobile app activities through brief videos. Each activity is virtually “led” by one of our Project Success team. Each activity encourages families to utilize the information discovered while completing the activities to foster a stronger connection between children and their parents or guardians.

We hope that many of our Project Success families will not only enjoy this new content, but also find the activities engaging, helpful and easy to use. At Project Success, we are so excited to see how our work can strengthen the conversations that families have together about their future, and also how that helps the kids be more thoughtful and excited about dreaming about the future and taking meaningful steps to get to the life they imagine!

If you’re a current FamDoo user, check out the new ‘BE’ content and let us know what you think.

If you’re new to FamDoo, click here to start a free account and explore the Project Success activities with your kids!

 

About Jason:

Jason Brown joined Project Success in 2000 and has been an educator since 1998. He completed his B.A. in English Literature from Mount Union College in Alliance, OH, where he also earned a license to teach 7th-12th grade English. He was an AmeriCorps member for two years, working as a VISTA with the Urban Corps and as an AmeriCorps Promise Fellow at the Volunteer Center. In both jobs he helped young people develop marketable skills through volunteering and service work. He also worked at the Bridge for Runaway Youth as a Counselor in their Emergency Crisis Shelter. He has worked for several theater companies, including the Guthrie Theater, Chaos Theories and Outward Spiral Theatre Company, and co-founded Emigrant Theater.

During his 15 years with Project Success, Jason has been a classroom Facilitator, a Program Manager and now the Director of Curriculum. Currently, he represents Project Success on several community coalitions including: Twin Cities Generation Next, the Northside Achievement Zone, the MPS College Access Network and co-leads the Twin Cities Career Readiness Collaborative. He has written and trained people on the Project Success Curriculum Guide and is currently developing other avenues for that curriculum to reach more kids throughout the country.