Helping Families Have A Healthy Holiday Season

My blog is a little late this time, due to Oklahoma weather causing several asthma attacks on me last week. As I started to think about this blog, it made me realize what great things my client, CCFI does for children and families. I thought about how lucky I am to have the ability to see a doctor when I am not feeling well. So many families in the Norman community do not have the capabilities to go to the doctor when they or their family member is feeling sick. Many families simply do not have enough money to do this and they must choose between taking their child to the doctor or having enough money to pay for childcare that month. The Center for Children and Families is helping to make this an easier choice for these families.

CCFI has implemented several programs for underprivileged families making their lives a little easier. Something as simple as an after school program, where parents can send their children and know that they are safe after school while their parents work, shows that a little help can go a long way. After attending the official tour of CCFI, where I learned more about their organization, I now understand why people would want to work for a non-profit. Before, I never thought I could see myself working at a non-profit and now I do not understand why I wouldn’t want to work at a place like CCFI. The work that they are doing is touching so many lives for the better each day. Seeing a child and parent play together for the first time or see a troubled parent turn their path around and decide to get help would be some of the most rewarding work.

My group has struggled with what we could possibly do for our client, CCFI. We have gone back and forth between our contact at CCFI, Whitney Russell, who is in charge of communications there, and Dr. Carstarphen. For about the first 8 weeks of class it seemed like we could not catch a break. We would come up with what we thought was a brilliant idea for our campaign with CCFI, only to find out that they already had something like that being done or to find out that our idea would not work for this class. Talk about frustrating! It was only yesterday we finally got it set in stone what we will do for our event. Not only are we incredibly behind the other groups, but we all have so much work to do for other classes during midterms. I believe our group will be able to pull of a fantastic event for CCFI.

We plan to hold our own event inside of one of their events. During the annual CCFI Christmas Open House, we will hold a diaper drive. I believe this will be very successful seeing that we have a very influential minister helping us to promote the diaper drive. Jim Burns, who is a member of the Ministerial Alliance, and also on the Board of Directors at CCFI will announce our event at the monthly Ministerial Alliance meeting. The purpose of this is for him to get the other members to announce the diaper drive to their congregations. We will provide the information that Jim Burns will say as well as the information for each member to say when they announce the event. We are going to have a short story for them to tell their congregation about how badly CCFI needs their help and hopefully this will persuade them to bring donations.

My own personal goal for this campaign is that providing diapers to families in need will allow for them to have the resources needed to keep their family healthy this holiday season.

Hey, life, slow down a little, would ya?

-- Rachel Wright

This semester is absolutely flying by! I can’t believe it’s already the middle of October… I need to start thinking of Halloween costumes, then it’s Thanksgiving and family-mania, then GRADUATION and Christmas, New Year’s and starting my life after college. Whoa. Well, that’s a conversation for blog 3. Right now, I need to talk about my lovely PR Campaigns group: Team Heroes. I honestly can’t remember why we chose that name, but I remember laughing about it, which we do a lot. It’s bitter-sweet to work with Lark, Michael, AJ and Lesha this semester. Because we get along so well, but we’re all graduating in December so we probably won’t see much of each other after this. We all have similar laid back personalities but we’re driven, too. That combination makes working as a team an utter breeze.

We’re working for the Center for Children and Families, Inc. (CCFI), a nonprofit United Way organization here in Norman. CCFI offers services to families struggling with abuse and neglect. The nonprofit has five programs:

Divorce Visitation Arbitration – CCFI provides a safe and nurturing environment for mediation, education visitation services and child advocacy for families who are divorced or separated. This program works towards reducing stress on children involved in these situations and strengthening parent-child relationships.

Neighborhood Centers – CCFI strengthens communities by providing opportunities for neighborhood residents to build relationships through fun, accessible and structured activities at safe neighborhood locations during out of school times. Safe neighborhoods present environments for happy kids and healthy families.

Teenage Parenting – CCFI offers support and education for pregnant and parenting teenagers to increase the likelihood of healthy outcomes for their children. CCFI staff works with young parents to teach them how to create safe, nurturing lifestyles for their families through intensive contact, case management and advocacy with local services.

Parents Assistance – CCFI staff members and volunteers work with parents to build stronger families by educating parents, have “play therapy” with their children and counseling families struggling with issues of abuse and neglect.

Extended Families – An extension of the Parents Assistance program, this plan provides short-term emergency foster care for children up to 18 years old, who may need a refuge while dealing with homelessness, mental illness, domestic violence or substance abuse.


The organization hired their first PR professional, Whitney, only 6 months ago, so needless to say the PR Pro is beyond swamped. Aside from trying to catch up from over thirty years with no public relations department, Whitney and crew want to increase the media visibility of CCFI. That is to say, the ultimate goal of our campaign is to establish the Center for Children and Families, Inc. as a media expert. When media professionals need expertise on topics such as abuse and neglect, we want them to think of CCFI first.

Our team is planning a media event, for which we will invite media professionals from central Oklahoma to Norman to learn about CCFI. We’re planning to hold this event during the week of Thanksgiving: National Family Week. On top of that, we’re proclaiming November 19th, 2008 as the City of Norman’s Family Development Day, through the Mayor’s office. Our speaker will talk about ways to cope with family stress during the holidays. We hope that our efforts will prove worthwhile by exposing the self-proclaimed “best kept secret in Norman:” CCFI.

Balancing Act

Balancing Act
By Michael Maldonado







On Thursday, October 4, Team Heroes attended the official presentation/tour for the Center for Children & Families, Inc. During the presentation, several directors within the organization spoke to us about the mission, needs and general operations of CCFI. Many other students in the class have probably heard the two CCFI groups lament over the somewhat contradictory objectives that have been presented to us. CCFI wants everyone in the community to instantly think of them when discussing organizations related to children and family development but they do not want to raise any funds or take on any more clients or volunteers. While overcoming this challenge is at the top of our groups’ priorities, an entirely different challenge occurred to me during the CCFI visit. How do the people at organizations that witness some of society’s most heartbreaking issues put their judgments and emotions on hold to do this kind of work?

CCFI is no stranger to seeing some horribly traumatic cases come through their doors. Our group was briefly told some examples of cases where children are neglected, abused and underdeveloped. Working on the public relations side of the organization, we do not even witness these things first hand. This is just a group project for a campaigns class for us. However, this is not just a project for Whitney Russell, the person in charge of communications at CCFI. She sees these things every day when she goes to work and is expected to put her sadness and anger aside in order to do her job.

Thinking about Whitney’s job brought me to yet another realization. The idea is not to leave one’s emotions at home but, rather, to bring them to work and incorporate them into the job. CCFI is one of Norman’s largest family development organizations and it is constantly seeing clients and helping families. Executive Director Linda Terrell told our group that she has seen miracles happen at CCFI. This is because everyone at the organization puts so much passion into what they do—from the Executive Director to the child therapist to the person in charge of communications. Linda Terrell explained that part of the CCFI philosophy is to treat all people involved in incoming cases (whether they are abusers or the abused) with a loving attitude. This is where the healing begins.

When considering a career in public relations, many people are somewhat hesitant to enter the non-profit arena. Not only do opportunities in the non-profit world seem less glamorous than some of the more sensationalized PR careers that seem to get more media attention, but they also occasionally deal with clients with very upsetting issues. Imagine doing PR every day for an organization such as Bryan’s House which helps children who are infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS. The emotional strain of doing work for an organization like Bryan’s House is undoubtedly difficult. However, it is important to understand how doing PR for such an organization has an immensely positive outcome for everyone involved.

The CCFI visit really gave me a different perspective on the work Team Heroes is doing for them. While it may be painful to hear about some of the issues that they have to deal with, the rewards of sharing CCFI’s message and aiding in the mission of the organization seem priceless. Having an emotional tie to them may also help us do an even better job.