By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Statewide parents rights organization Power2Parent (P2P) is adopting an inner city elementary school in an effort to foster greater family togetherness for its students. And P2P leaders are now seeking help from local families to get that done.
Power2Parent and Grant Bowler Elementary school have joined forces to establish a new game library at Las Vegas Title I school, H.P. Fitzgerald Elementary School. The library would provide games and other activities that youngsters could check out and take home for the weekend to spend quality time with parents, siblings and other family members.
P2P board member Charlie Melvin, who lives in Logandale, explained that the group is looking to broaden its scope in empowering and advocating for all parents and their role in students’ lives.
“All parents, no matter their circumstances, want solutions to problems in education,” Melvin said. “We feel one way that we can help with those problems is by strengthening families, encouraging family togetherness in the home.”
The concept has worked for P2P in the past. This is the third Title I school that the organization has worked with in establishing a game library for kids. “We have some measures for tracking returns on this and they have been very positive,” Melvin said.
To get the game library at Fitzgerald Elementary started, P2P is seeking donations from Moapa Valley families with children attending Bowler Elementary. A collection box has been placed at the school for donations of new or used (with all the pieces) board games. These games may be brought by students or parents into the school and donated to help students from the inner city school.
Melvin said that the response from the Bowler school community has already been positive.
“As soon as we said we want to partner with them to help at Title I school, people’s hearts have opened and they want to do what they can to help,” Melvin said of the Bowler students and parents.
Melvin said that they need to have around 50-60 games at a bare minimum to get the game library started at the school.
“But we certainly don’t want to place a limit on it,” she said. “It would be much better to have many more than that. And I think, from the positive response that we have already received, that we will end up with a lot more than that.”
The donation drive will continue throughout the month of October. Students, parents and community members can bring in games for donation at the Bowler drop box until Thursday, October 31.
“Our central goal as an organization is to address educational problems and other issues in society by strengthening the family,” Melvin said. “It is just amazing how quickly that the Moapa Valley catches the vision of that and comes together as families for families.”
For more information about the P2P organization go to www.power2parent.org.
