Parent Engagement Network celebrates 20 years of supporting families
Aug. 25—Providing Boulder Valley parents with the latest information and vetted resources, while also connecting them to other parents, has kept the Parent Engagement Network going for 20 years.
As the organization looks ahead to the next 20 years, it's providing more talks in Broomfield and is looking to expand to the St. Vrain Valley School District.
"We're meeting a universal need for parents to have a community that supports them," said board chairwoman and longtime volunteer Paula Nelson. "When I first started at PEN, I was a parent who was just really afraid of everything that was happening around me. It helped me to know other people were going through similar things."
The Parent Engagement Network, or PEN, is celebrating with a birthday party from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Saturday in Boulder. For more information and to buy tickets, go to parentengagementnetwork.org.
The genesis of the organization was a Boulder Valley parent committee created during a school district effort to address drug and alcohol use among students. The grassroots group continued working on the issue, officially becoming a nonprofit in 2009.
While the organization started with a focus on substance use, it soon branched out to other topics, such as depression, suicide prevention and eating disorders. Now, PEN works in four main areas: drugs and alcohol, stress and anxiety, technology, and building a resilient family.
"Substances are just a symptom," Nelson said. "We wanted to be there as a support so parents could meet any of the challenges that come up."
PEN hosts talks with local and national speakers, online programs, podcasts and webinars, and provides downloadable tools. Spanish interpretation is provided at most events, while many materials are translated into Spanish.
Prior to the pandemic, the organization hosted a series on parenting adolescents and trained parent volunteers to organize school events based on a school community's needs and interests.
During the pandemic, PEN offered virtual parenting meetings, including its last two annual Reducing Stress and Anxiety symposiums. For last year's symposium, the organization went with a "pay what you can" model.
In February, PEN was awarded a $9,400 grant from Broomfield's Health and Human Services department to fund parenting education for the Broomfield community through the end of the year.
Executive Director Stacy Cornay, a marketing business owner who was hired in May to fill the part-time executive director position, said she wants to continue to support the mission of helping parents raise happy, healthy humans.
"Parenting is really fundamental," she said.
She added that she sees a huge need for PEN to support families after more than two years of the pandemic.
"It's been so hard for everybody," she said. "We want to provide the guidance, research based programming and support to help people come through that."
