— Our Mission
All families in Monterey County benefit from equitable access to resources that reduce stigma, eliminate barriers, and provide support towards building positive parent-child interaction and family wellness through education and programming from pregnancy to age five. When caregivers are effectively supported, families thrive and children flourish.
— Our Vision
All children flourish when families are embraced with resources and support during pregnancy through age five.
– Our Values
We support all people with free and reduced cost services during the early years of family building. We serve our community’s diverse needs, from traditional playgroups, innovative healing circles, peer-supported listening, and provider education. Our programs are informed by the culture, practices, traditions, beliefs, and languages of those we serve.
Families who have been historically marginalized are also those with the higher lifetime risk of adverse family experiences, therefore we have a deliberate focus on serving our low-income Spanish-speaking communities in Monterey County.
We believe that by empowering people with emotional support during early parenthood, together we dismantle systems of oppression, marginalization and racism while standing on the fundamentals of spreading social justice and racial equity to all mothers, all pregnant and birthing people, all caregivers and all families.
— Our Story
Parenting Connection of Monterey County (PCMC) was originally founded in 2001 as Friends of Parents’ Place to accept charitable donations on behalf of the Pacific Grove Unified School District Adult School Parents’ Place program. In 2014, the non-profit decided to broaden its scope of impact by directly offering parent-education programs to more parents and families in Monterey County. We changed our name to The Parenting Connection of Monterey County and announced our new mission.
dei STATEMENT (diversity equity and inclusion) statement
The Parenting Connection of Monterey County is dedicated to being a source of acceptance, belonging, community, and empowerment for the communities of Monterey County that we proudly serve. Recognizing the history, cultural pluralism, and intersectionality that is represented in our diverse community we have made the following commitments to Diversity Equity and Inclusion as an organization:
- Continue to meet families where they are in all ways including but not limited to: geographically, linguistically, culturally, emotionally, and economically.
- Maintain and continuously seek to have a diverse board and staff that represents the communities we serve
- Be brave in our commitment to listening and learning, operating from a mindset of cultural humility, even when it is uncomfortable.
- Inform our work with perspectives from historically disenfranchised groups in our community
- Provide accessible and loving safe spaces that offer a sense of community where differences are both respected and nurtured.