For over 30 years, the Alliance for Children and Families, a nonprofit that serves and advocates on behalf of children and families, has lead National Family Week (NFW). In celebration of National Family Week, which falls on the week of Thanksgiving each year, the Alliance for Children and Families encourages groups all over the country to honor families and to initiate or strengthen advocacy efforts on their behalf. Although it is only a week long celebration, the Alliance ultimately hopes that NFW will inspire communities to support families throughout the year by promoting family-friendly policies such as economic self sufficiency, affordable housing, dependable transportation, child care, health care, and education and training.

Event Recommendations

When conducting a day or week of solidarity, it helps to show groups how to effectively plan activities in conjunction with your event and how these activities can strengthen the work they are already doing. The Alliance for Children and Families encourages local nonprofits to use National Family Week as an opportunity to educate families about local resources and to work with neighborhood groups, citizens, and leaders in their communities to improve dialog. In preparation for the week, the Alliance sends brochures to groups throughout the country with ideas for conducting outreach within communities and developing a clearly stated message and set of goals. Suggestions include presenting an advocacy award to a local leader, launching a policy platform, promoting legislation in collaboration with the themes of NFW, and committing publicly to support the campaign.

Along with the brochure, the Alliance for Children and Families provides groups with a toolkit that provides materials on National Family Week and ideas for local events. For example, the toolkit suggests holding a resource/informational fair where family organizations can educate the public and promote the services they provide. Another suggestion is a Family Forum, which brings together state and local leaders and citizens to identify challenges in the community. Last year, a group from Milwaukee planned one such family forum to discuss a report that compared the locations of counseling services in the city to where people in need actually live. The group planned breakout sessions following the family forum to work on the results from the survey.

The toolkit also features information on how to conduct outreach, including tips for contacting the media, engaging public officials, and fundraising. Each year, the Alliance works with members from each state to obtain a proclamation for National Family Week from their governor or mayor, and holds teleconference training sessions to teach them how to engage local media. These steps build capacity among local groups and add visibility and clout to the week. CD-ROMs with templates, graphics, and other outreach tools are also sent out to all members.

To plan a successful event, it is also extremely helpful to incorporate a diverse array of participants and organizations. In addition to the materials sent out to their national members promoting NFW, the Alliance for Children and Families contacted schools over the summer through a print mailing to district offices, encouraging them to incorporate National Family Week into their curriculum. In fact, by reaching out to nonprofits, businesses/corporations, national organizations, policymakers, families, faith groups, and schools alike, the Alliance makes sure that everyone can do their part to help commemorate the week.

Having an informative website also helps in the effort to engage diverse groups. The Alliance website effectively serves as a centralized planning site for NFW, with detailed information about the groups that are involved, what they are doing this year, what they have done in the past, the history of NFW, and a tremendous amount of information regarding event planning, including their toolkit.

The Power of Solidarity

National Family Week thus offers a compelling example of an event that has been transformed from being a week of celebrating and honoring families to a more proactive platform for encouraging and empowering advocacy. Ultimately, through effective planning, coordination, and outreach, events of observance and solidarity have the potential to build lasting awareness and commitment to a cause. Such events offer groups an opportunity to build capacity and membership, engage a diversity of stakeholders, and focus local and national attention on an issue.