Our History

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Alan and Joanne Foley are the creators of the Early Catholic Family Life Program.

 

For 14 years, Joanne was a Parent Educator and Administrator in a nationally recognized and acclaimed public school program called Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) offered in schools throughout Minnesota.  As an ECFE teacher, Joanne partnered with other staff to write a hands-on curriculum for ECFE. The curriculum is based on the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child and is used to strengthen families though education and support of parents with their young children. 

Realizing that the powerful ECFE model could be used effectively to help Catholic parents better form families with Christ at the center,  Joanne  then wrote another curriculum which focused on teaching parental values and on the spiritual life of children. The result was the Early Catholic Family Life program. 

 

In creating and teaching this curriculum, Joanne found that parents were eager to learn how to communicate and teach their own moral and religious values to their children.  So, as life long Catholics eager to evangelize within the local church, the Foleys decided that Early Catholic Family Life (ECFL) should be shared with their diocese and beyond.  It was a natural fit, since, as a Business Administrator, Alan is familiar with the issues surrounding implementation of new programs, and how to be successful in situations where financial and other resources are scarce.

So in 2001, the Foleys began working with the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Office of Marriage and Family Life to build the Early Catholic Family Life Program to what it is today.

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Our Program

 

ECFL has been implemented in more than 100 parishes in the Twin Cities area. The Foleys have also prepared parishes to provide ECFL in the New Ulm, St. Cloud and Winona Dioceses, as well as in Georgia, Kansas, Colorado, and Wisconsin. 

 

The ECFL program includes seven 2-hour classes offered within the parish setting, utilizing spaces and facilities that are very common and widely available in parishes everywhere.  Both parents and children attend the sessions, and each session consists of an organized parent-child interaction time, followed by a simultaneous parent discussion time and a children's time.

 

ECFL fills the gap between Baptism and First Communion and binds young families to the parish rather than allow them drift away from the parish and sometimes away from their faith.  In addition, the parent education portion of the program encourages and enables them to get to know one another and to reinforce that there other parents in the parish who want to have a strong Catholic family. Strong and lasting friendships follow. The participants become stronger more engaged parishioners and stronger more engaged Catholics.

 

The materials are very straight forward and easy to use and training is available. Training in ECFL has been found to be essential to successfully implement it in your parish. Conducted by Joanne and Alan, the training features hands-on opportunities to learn about how the program works, how to utilize the materials and how to promote ECFL within your parish.

 

The ECFL program is sought out by Religious Ed staff because it addresses a problem that almost every parish has - the absence of programing for families with preschool children. At most parishes, families come to the parish when their children are ready for Baptism, but then are not specifically invited again until their child needs preparation for First Communion. 

Because ECFL is focused on young families who are at the point of making decisions about where to place their child for preschool and kindergarten, it often encourages enrollment in the parish preschool and school. 

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ECFL can be easily adapted to become a part of a preschool's offerings.

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The primary source of the materials and ideas for the Early Catholic Family Life program is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. ECFL has earned the Imprimatur and the Nihil Obstat designations, designed to ensure that works that present the teachings of the Church do so correctly. 

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The Foleys provide information and training to parishes as they implement the ECFL program.  Feel free to contact them with questions.

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