Michelle Toney and FamiliesFORWARD look to the future

The learning nonprofit FamiliesFORWARD may just be in the Cincinnati area for now, but Executive Director Michelle Toney has dreams to implement its cradle-to-career model nationwide. Last year, FamiliesFORWARD merged with Learning Grove, a Covington-based nonprofit providing educational services to Northern Kentucky and southwestern Ohio.

Toney spoke with NKY Magazine about what FamiliesFORWARD offers students, its vision for the future and what she loves about her job.

What is FamiliesFORWARD?

We are part of the community learning center model and we’ve been part of that for about 30 years. In 1993, we redirected all of our efforts from preventing abuse and neglect to bringing together children, families and members of the community to ultimately support our after-school programs that we have now.

How does merging with Learning Grove benefit both organizations?

FamiliesFORWARD brings an awesome reputation and commitment to working with our families in the greater Ohio area. Learning Grove works in both Ohio and Kentucky. When you put the two of our forces together—it provides greater resources for our families, the opportunity to provide more support for our families and a broader network for the families. When you look at how our families benefit from our support, we’re very much child-centered. We want to make sure that our parents and the other community members also are able to be supported and working with our young scholars that we work with. We know that a successful education and a healthy child starts at home. Because of that, I know that the two agencies together only support that more and are really able to provide that total circle of support for our students, our families and the communities that we serve.

What is the day-to-day of FamiliesFORWARD?

We start at the resource coordination piece, where we’re bringing services in from the community to support the young people and families that we serve. And those supports range from tutoring to providing a network to provide food support services for our young people, clothes for our young people.

We also partner with United Way through Project Lift, where we’re able to support our young people’s families. We can support them in a lot of different ways from helping them get cars fixed, potentially rent assistance and things of that nature … and then we round out our day-to-day services with our really robust after-school programming that we have where we provide a variety of enrichment for the students that we serve and those enrichment can range that range from things like drones, robotics, computer literacy, coding and martial arts.

What is your favorite part of your job?

If I’m able to just sow a seed in one young adult or young scholar’s life, that individual then sows the seed and then the next individual sows the seed. It keeps going and keeps paying itself forward. That’s what gives me energy. That’s what I really like, that my input and my impact on these young people and their families can be everlasting.

Where do you see FamiliesFORWARD in the future?

I would like to see us continue to be part of Cincinnati Public Schools … I’d like to see us outside of the state of Ohio and Kentucky and that our model was throughout the United State, and we were providing good support and services to young people, their families and the communities that they serve throughout the United States—bringing good strong community partners into each school that we work with.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. For a full overview of services FamiliesFORWARD offers, visit familiesforward.net.