Parents know the truth. They see right through you.

That’s why, LINC Executive Vice President Janet Miles-Bartee told her roomful of after-school educators and programmers, the heart of caring communities has to be honest, generous and genuine.

Miles-Bartee and LINC Caring Communities Program Specialist Carl Wade led a LINC team that presented several workshops at the annual conference of the Missouri Association for Adult Continuing and Community Education at Osage Beach at the Lake of Ozarks June 21-23.

And LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Jason Ervin won the 2022 Outstanding MAACCE Member of the Year Award.

The conference theme was “A World of Opportunities,” and the powerful potential of caring communities has been freshly revealed to all after-school programs, especially through the pandemic, Miles-Bartee said.

“People have been asking how do you do what you do?” she said. “How do you get the families — not just the children — but the families, the neighborhoods and the communities involved in the work that you do?”

The answer, Miles-Bartee offered in her presentation — “Do you really want them there?” — has been revealed in the way that parents in need sought out their LINC Caring Communities Coordinators for help during Covid-19.

All after-school programs have this same opportunity of service, she told her audience.

“These are the people they have relationships with,” she said. “These are the people they see every day when they drop their children off . . . when they pick their children up.”

“It’s about zoning in on who is important in the work, who we have to listen to and our responsibility to the families that we serve.”

Wade, in a pair of workshops — “Building Community” and “Managing Behaviors” — presented classroom tools and strategies that likewise were grounded in caring relationships.

In demonstrations of ice-breaker games and behavior intervention strategies, Wade showed the vital joy and comfort of a classroom where everyone knows each other’s name and cares for each other.

“Do you feel needed and important and valued in this room?” he asked his workshop participants as they stood laughing together, no longer strangers at the end of the hour.

“I want you to go back to your home sites,” he said, “and go out and build community.”

LINC communications team member Joe Robertson carried the caring communities theme into a workshop on how after-school programs can expand the reach and depth of their work through websites, social media and newsletters that act as community hubs for information and resources.

“We need to be problem solvers,” he said. “It’s about information. It’s about giving aid. It’s about inspiring joy and confidence . . . in a caring community your families want to be a part of.”

Honoring Ervin

Middle school students have a way of testing the strength of a Caring Communities after-school program in ways elementary children don’t, Wade said while presenting LINC’s Jason Ervin with the Outstanding MAACCE Member of the Year Award.

Middle schoolers, Wade told the conference awards luncheon audience, are old enough to “vote with their feet.”

“If they’re truly staying, you must be doing something right,” he said. “And Jason is doing something right.”

Much of Ervin’s 23 years of service with LINC has been leading middle school Caring Communities programs, including is current work at Grandview Middle School.

“Jason has been a pillar in his community,” Wade said, “by leading and participating in efforts that provide resources to families such as utility assistance, food drives, pantries, clothing give-aways” and Covid-19 vaccinations.

The award comes in recognition of work “that comes naturally to him,” Wade said. “There’s no slowing him down.”