Abstract
This paper describes a 1960s “War on Poverty” parent group education program that brought together three national private voluntary agencies with federal funding by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Project ENABLE (Education Neighborhood Action for a Better Living Environment) sought to direct professional efforts to help/empower the poor and societal members of ethnic minority groups. Group education as a preventive modality was used to strengthen parents’ problem solving skills in their roles both as parents and as community leaders. The author describes his group leadership role together with that of the indigenous case aides who helped direct/enable the collective power of a group of poor Spanish speaking Mexican origin families living in barrios (neighborhoods) of a major metropolitan southern city. Project ENABLE embraced a strengths-based perspective characteristic of social work’s historical empowerment traditions. Despite its brief existence, Project ENABLE functioned as a demonstration program in 62 communities across the United States. Ironically, its prevention focus and demonstration nature served to undermine its ability to compete with other OEO initiatives like Head Start and job training programs. The author cites a combination of historical and logistic factors that contributed to the short life and ultimate demise of a once promising outreach program.
Highlights
This paper describes a 1960s “War on Poverty” parent group education program that brought together three national private voluntary agencies with federal funding by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO)
The project was envisioned as an outreach prevention demonstration model designed to serve impoverished families living in minority communities through a collaborative strategy that utilized private social agencies supported with public funding
The Economic Opportunity Act was part of President Lyndon Baines Johnson's social and economic initiatives known as the "Great Society" in which we were waging a “War on Poverty." Sargent Shriver, a key architect of the Economic Opportunity Act served as director of OEO until 1969
Summary
In 1966 there was no National Urban League affiliate in Houston, requiring local trainees to learn group leadership roles for conducting both parent and community education (community organization) groups. This was fortunate for me because I was assigned a seasoned mentor in Felton Alexander. In addition to Felton, Alline Del Valle, another MSW, supervised my parent group education learning. She directed the Family Life Education program at my home agency in addition to being parent education regional staff-trainer for Project ENABLE. What is not known is whether similar supervision was missing for Project colleagues at other sites
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