Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities: The Impact of the Utah Valley University’s Stronger Families Project

Families need support so that communities remain strong. The Stronger Families Project (SFP) at Utah Valley University is a unique and powerful resource in the communities surrounding the university. Families attend a free, eight-week, evidence-based family life education program aimed at teaching skills to parents, teens, and children that are necessary for healthy family life. The program is rooted in Family Systems Theory, offering tailored age-based classes and a whole-family class to address mental health and developmental wellbeing of both the individual and family unit. Classes are taught in English and Spanish by interns from family science and related majors, and the program is further supported by service-learning students performing community service hours. In more than 15 years of service, SFP has supported over one thousand families and trained hundreds of students to deliver effective and impactful family programming to their communities. Ongoing research measuring positive outcomes for community participants shows statistically significant results for all variables.