The Model Family Mentorship Program began in January 1995 in the State of Washington and dedicated itself to strengthening all families through mentorship and volunteerism. The organization has provided outreach opportunities and activities for families designed to strengthen and encourage positive family development. The programs efforts have been directed at building strong families, focusing on low income and single parent house-hold issues, emphasizing activities which nurture healthy children and families, and offering our nationally recognized family to family mentorship skill building model.

The Model Family Mentorship Program works with over 135 families participating in the program throughout our partnered communities. Each participating family or mentee family is referred to the program by established outside community partner organizations and then matched with a volunteer mentor family within the community to explore positive family activities developed around a planned interaction model. The program is designed to run from Jan.-July, focusing on planned inter-action activities. Model Families provides basic family resource services, family & child literacy projects, and computer & technology awareness projects for the entire family, family goal building programs, educational book scholarships, and offers our unique "family to family" mentoring program all designed to strengthen and encourage families & the lives of children. During our brief summer hiatus our program advisors evaluate the past year, retooling & adding new families to stimulate the program for the next coming year.

This endeavor is the first of its kind anywhere in the country and Washington State (Greater Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane) is the first of many states to benefit from such a challenging program. The program is designed to address the devastating challenges facing the family structure model. It is designed to demonstrate a working concept of the "Extended Family" model through our dedication to mentorship and volunteerism in order to strengthen family values, educational advancement, economic advancement, community awareness and the sharing of resources throughout our partnered communities.

Model Families is a 501C non-profit organization; funded privately through corporate partners & private community donations. It is because of our corporate sponsor partnerships, community relationships & our wonderful volunteer host families, program advisors, program volunteers which all make the continued success of our program possible.