Your API 2015 Accomplishments and 2016 Plans

Your API 2015 Accomplishments and 2016 Plans

 

After celebrating API’s 20th year serving families and validating the impact of API, 2015 was a year to plan and ensure that API can continue our services and programs. API continued valuable programs such as accrediting leaders, distributing research-backed and investigative articles in timely publications, raising awareness about secure attachment, and helping individual families nurture for a more compassionate future. This is the core of API’s work. Families and services are grateful for your support and donations, and want you know how much you accomplished.

Accredit, Join, Serve

You brought the number of API Leaders and leader applicants to 248 and local support groups to 80, with several new countries represented. You provided the support leaders needed, such as meeting guides, outreach materials, mentoring, monthly support calls, “Leader Talk” enewsletters, and “Connections” blog posts, as well as addressed unique circumstances with one-on-one support from API staff. You developed a new Support Group Reporting form to help tell the API story more effectively. You celebrated API Leaders with 1, 5, 10, and even more than 15 years of dedicated volunteer service in their communities.

You certified 100 parent educators through the Attached at the Heart program, adding parents and professionals in Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Atlanta. You provided dedicated staff that helped build the program and a team to move it forward.

You invited new members to API, with more than 600 new members joining in the last quarter. An estimated 12,000 are reached directly by API, and 10s of thousands indirectly through API’s online presence, also serving as a resource for many other organizations and websites.

Write, Produce, Share

You published more than 275 original articles on API’s AttachedFamily.com online magazine, Parent Compass enewsletter, the API website, and APtly Said blog, as well as provided syndicated material for Mothering, Moby Wrap, MomsCharlotte, Franklin Goose, Psych Central, and other news sites that reached and encouraged more families and normalized API’s Eight Principles of Parenting.

You shared with families and professionals 300 articles and research, advancing attachment parenting through the API Links monthly enews, The Journal of Attachment Parenting, and social media communities.

You covered attachment through the topics of Earth Day, Spankout Day, Screen-Free Week, Military Child Month, Cesarean Awareness Month, Father’s Day, Get Caught Reading Month, Kangaroo Care Awareness Day, International Peace Day, health and immunity from breastfeeding, postpartum depression, coparenting series, ACEs and trauma prevention, positive discipline strategies, an inspired Mother’s Day series, and more.

You produced new Attached Family magazine issues on “Parenting Creatively,” “Nurturing Peace,” “Attached Siblings,” and “Inspired Parents.” You published the first API ebook, Choose Compassion, a primer on API’s Eight Principles of Parenting.

Read,  Learn, Help

You read together transformational books through the API Reads online group of nearly 700 (with a brand-new logo!), including Simplicity Parenting; Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles; Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids; Parenting From Your Heart; Love and Anger; and Siblings Without Rivalry.

You provided valuable breastfeeding information and support for API’s World Breastfeeding Week APtly Said series.

You distributed more than 5,000 API infant sleep safety brochures to groups and individuals around the world. You engaged more than 800 respondents for an unprecedented survey on cosleeping practices.

You supported 1,000s of parents on topics like sleep, positive discipline, breastfeeding, separation, custody, birth, babywearing, development, and more through the API Forum, API Warmline, API social media messages, and comments on posts that were addressed by accredited API Leaders from around the world.

You elevated the discussion on parental leave, helping stress the importance of early secure attachment that is profoundly affected by the presence of parents. You provided the research, position paper, blog posts, daily calendar tips, parent stories on leave, news articles, partnerships, auction event, API Live teleseminar with Kim John Payne, so that API along with 10 organizational partners could observe Attachment Parenting Month 2015 by highlighting “Parental Presence: Birthing Families, Strengthening Society.”

Connect, Recognize, Organize

You networked and shared missions with other organizations to reach more families and professionals at the DONA virtual conference, the Lamaze conference, MommyCon conferences in Seattle and Atlanta, the Society for Research in Child Development conference, and La Leche League conferences, as well as a number of baby fairs and other events.

You recognized API as a Great Nonprofits 2015 Top Nonprofit, with five stars and 100 thoughtful reviews. You qualified API as a GivingMatters registered nonprofit and eligible for the Big Payback fundraising event.

You welcomed new API Board Member Camille North, as well as many wonderful new volunteers now numbering more than 90 who put in countless hours to carry out API’s mission.

You spoke up on the importance of resilience and the direct impact you make as a supporter of API. You put a spotlight on the work of API Leaders and those who support them in their daily work.

You facilitated major changes within API that make volunteering more efficient; improve families’ experiences with using API resources and services; and positioned API for more powerful future impact, including:

  • More Care - Ability to enhance our contact and communications and provide event services to families through our new “Constant Contact Cares for Kids” account.

  • More Kind - A monumental move from our donation and support group resources to the new “Kindful” system that helps us make giving easier and more pleasant.

  • More Serving - An accounting provider to help manage API’s finances and free up staff to focus more on API’s mission, aptly named “Jitasa,” which means “the spirit of serving others.”

  • More Simple - A state charitable solicitation service, “Simple Charity Registration” by the Urban Institute, that helps API meet its nonprofit reporting requirements.

You remembered Marshall Rosenberg, father of Nonviolent Communication and author of a key text of API Leaders worldwide, paying tribute to a tremendous influence on the daily work at API, family lives, and volunteer service to families.

Plan, Grow, Fulfill

As API goes forward into 2016, the plans sustaining and growing the message of healthy, secure attachment depend on you.

The opportunities API has for advancing parenting with attachment in mind are everywhere. That’s fortunate, since the need for parenting education and support remains monumental. API plans to address the need and will:

  • Work to reach significantly more families and professionals;

  • Advocate for a society that supports parents with a family-friendly infrastructure;

  • Broaden its presence around the world to reduce parent support deserts and language barriers to quality parenting information;

  • Implement new programs that open up attachment parenting to new demographic networks, making the message and support for secure attachment more accessible;

  • Expand research and advocacy for parenting education;

  • Introduce new ways of seeing the API Principles, including the controversial topic of infant sleep;

  • Assess program impact and employ the theory of change model;

  • Increase API’s financial stability and base of support in order to add staff and staff hours and meet monthly expenses; and

  • Continue to reinforce the new “care, kind, serve, and simple” systems put in place for a solid and seamless foundation that keeps the focus on API’s mission.

Thank you for your support in 2015 and as API begins 2016. API and its impact throughout the last 21 years is just not possible without your generous support.

Please Donate to API and Thank You!

 

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