Being an active parent - Unitaf Parents committee

Marianna Antoniuk -  mariana.antoniuk@gmail.com

Unitaf runs day care centers in south Tel Aviv for children without status in Israel to keep them out of the pirate childcare frameworks that expose children to extreme neglect and risk. The staff at our daycare centers are from the community, and they maintain high standards and receive ongoing professional guidance and supervision from our coordinators. Children who are in Unitaf frameworks are provided with a safe and nurturing environment, where we provide physical, emotional and developmental needs. In parallel, our coordinators accompany the children’s parents, through an approach that seeks to empower them as parents and create stronger connection and stability within their families.

The parents committee aims are: create involvement from parents in each facility; positive activism; make the parents more involved in the children’s life; be ambassadors and the connection between Unitaf and the community; create a support network between the parents that will make them able to support the community; and give empowerment to the parents that they can express themselves in their daily routine.

In the last 2 years the parents committee developed different projects like a library for children, holiday parties, lectures with educational professionals and doctors and lectures conducted by the parents, always focusing on bringing more knowledge and tools for their community.

At this conference, Unitaf’s community development director and members of the parents committee presented how the ongoing planning is going, scheduled meetings and the impact on their community from their projects had in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Mariana Antoniuk- Mariana is from São Paulo, Brazil. She spent six years in the Catholic University, São Paulo  where she received her bachelor in pedagogy and master in education. She specializes in humanist education. Today she is the Community Development Director and the Head of Home Nurseries Program in the organization Unitaf.

To be in touch with Tedros or Arsema that presented with Mariana please send an email to Mariana.