With support from community partners like you, last year alone Echo trained nearly 2,500 parents through community classes and classes in domestic violence shelters…parents like Karen Gonzalez who was featured in a recent NPR broadcast.
“My body would feel stressed or tight or I couldn’t breath or I would hold my breath and I didn’t even realize, ‘Oh, wow, I’m not breathing,’” Gonzalez remembers.
Then 29, she struggled to meet her family’s clothes, food and other needs, then realized that her children also had been traumatized. They acted out, had trouble in school, and developed fears of many things.
She said her life changed when Echo Parenting & Education came to her shelter and invited her to a parenting class.
Gonzalez said she learned that how she responded to her children’s behavioral issues mattered. She was taught “how to break the cycle of violence, how to look at the children [with] compassion and [with] love — basic human needs that we’re all trying to meet,” she said.
Gonzalez felt she received life-changing benefits from the Echo trainings, so she took the 100-hour certification course and now conducts classes herself.”
Through Echo’s classes, many families experience what it is to overcome generational trauma and all parents learn how to create loving, connected relationships so that children can grow up happy and healthy…and continue this legacy to their own children.
A contribution of $500 sends a whole family through our 10-class parenting series and covers the cost of providing safe, caring childcare while parents are in class. With your gift of $50, $100, $500 or any amount, you can be assured that you are helping Echo change lives of many families from different backgrounds and experiences.
Please send your contribution today or visit our website to make an online donation. And thank you for your support, in all its manifest ways.
