HIPPY Holidays!

Dallas HIPPY Family

Wishing you the very best in 2008! The holidays mark the halfway point of our program year. After a much deserved break we will return (January 7th) to focus on some upcoming projects:

1. HIPPY 20 Year Celebration: February 21 at 6:30 pm, at the Latino Cultural Center. Hold the date and let us know if you can join in the festivities! We are bringing together alumni parents, children, staff, stakeholders and home visitors to celebrate 20 years of HIPPY in Dallas.

2. HIPPY Home Instructor Rally, February 21-22, 2008. This is our annual training event for HIPPY Home Instructors. Each year we provide Home Instructors with both professional and personal development. This year they will receive training on how to maximize their AmeriCorps college education award, and then they will focus on how to develop leadership in parents.

3. Evaluation--we have several evaluation efforts underway this year, begining with our new online MIS (Management Information System) to track family progress. UNT professor Angela Nievar is completing the data gathering on a Timberlawn Foundation funded study comparing HIPPY and non-HIPPY families. Amber Brown will begin data gathering on a study of HIPPY parents who were teenagers when their "HIPPY Child" was born. All this on top of our "regular" evaluation using a parent involvement survey and kindergarten teacher survey!

4. HIPPY*VISTA: 2008 will mark the start up of this exciting project. VISTA members will be placed in various communities (Farmer's Branch/Carrollton; Denton; Fort Worth and one more to be announced soon...) across Texas. These VISTA's will focus on developing a network of stakeholders and funding for parent involvement and school readiness.

That's it for now!