Goals

The Center for Family Work and Community (CFWC) was founded in 1994 to conduct research and carry out actions to improve higher education engagement with diverse families, organizations, and communities. Our founding director, Dr. Linda Silka, recently left to become the director of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine Orono. During her tenure as director, she nurtured and highlighted the many talents of the CFWC staff so that we could continue to learn from each other and from everyone we worked with. The wor on the left is a compilation of everyone’s skills and interests on staff. As you can see, everyone listed community as the core since it is the largest word in the picture. This is the heart of CFWC and the heart of Dr. Linda Silka.

At the CFWC, we work on community capacity building, family enrichment, leadership development, strengthening linkages between the community and the university, and community empowerment. Our research focuses on educational inclusion, community problem solving, working with diverse groups, the immigrant experience, and strengthening partnerships. Our initiatives draw on the strengths of community leaders and the region’s cultural diversity. Organizationally we work to:

• Ensure that university research contributes to regional problem solving and leads directly to improved policy making, programs and services.
  
  
• Ensure that under served groups have access to technical resources that enable them to strengthen their efforts and impact the region.
  
  
• Design and disseminate new interdisciplinary approaches to address regional needs, particularly in the face of changing demographics.
  
  
• Devise and test new practices for institutions of higher education in New England  to carry out successful collaborative projects with communities and schools.
  
  
• Assist in the building of a regional infrastructure for university engagement in regional problem solving.

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