MiR started as an initiative in FUG’s (National Parents’ Committee for Primary and Secondary Education) project “Minority Language Parents – a Resource for Students’ Education in School”. It existed then as a loose network for parents who wanted to participate in the cooperation between home and school and become better guides for their children. When FUG’s project ended in December 2006, several of the parents who were active in the network took the initiative to establish MiR as an independent, voluntary organization and continue the work under their own management.
Our work has shown that minority language families want to cooperate with the school and that they both want to and can take responsibility for their children’s learning. The establishment of MiR as an organization provided a basis for further awareness about parents’ role in relation to Norwegian schools, society in general, and their children in particular.
MiR works to raise parents’ awareness about challenges in the multicultural school and society, to showcase good examples of how parents can best support their children’s education, and to create good models and a positive climate for cooperation between parents and schools.
Read also about the related initiative The Parental Arena