The Initiative
The Alabama Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (ACHMI) is funded by a 5-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Family Assistance. It is a partnership between Auburn University, the Alabama Children's Trust Fund, Family Resource Centers, Mental Health Centers, and many other agencies and individuals at the State and Local levels who have joined together to build and sustain healthy relationships and stable marriages throughout Alabama.
Our Goal
ACHMI's goal is to strengthen Alabama families by:
- Raising public awareness of the importance of healthy, stable relationships and marriages for children, family and community well-being.
- Increasing access to healthy relationship/marriage resources for all Alabama citizens.
- Training community members and professionals in research-based educational programs that strengthen relationships and marriages.
Our Target Populations
Healthy relationships and strong marriages are for everyone! We provide programming for youth, non-married parents, pre-marital couples, stepfamilies and married couples. There is mounting research evidence that the trends of increasing marital and family instability have a negative impact on children, adults, families, and their communities. The research is clear: healthy relationships and marriages, and resulting family stability benefit the physical, social, and emotional well-being of adults and children. Even though we know that healthy couples lead to healthy families and healthy children, there has been little effort to systematically provide educational resources and prevention programming that focuses on relationship skills for couples and individuals. ACHMI is focused on ensuring that this important area is not a "missing link" in family life education and prevention programming in Alabama.
Our Curricula
Education is powerful! Take time to learn about healthy relationship skills - it will be one of the best investments you can make for your family and community. We're delighted to offer these five relationship and marriage education programs through community partners. Each program is based on research with families and couples. Learn information and skills that help strengthen relationships and marriages.
- Basic Training for Couples: Black Marriage Education
- Mastering the Magic of Love
- Relationship Smarts Plus
- Smart Steps for Stepfamilies
- Together We Can: Caring for My Family
Basic Training: Black Marriage Education
Dr. Rozario Slack
Nisa Muhammad
"Your marriage can be better, wedded bliss can be your goal, and this program provides the map to get you there."
Basic Training for Couples is a marriage education curriculum developed by Dr. Rozario Slack and Nisa Islam Muhammad, who have joined forces to create Black Marriage Publications, dedicated to producing materials that promote forming and sustaining healthy marriages in the Black community.
This 8-session curriculum is offered by trained facilitators in a group setting for couples interested in growing healthy relationships and marriages. The curriculum addresses communication, conflict management, sexuality and intimacy, and how to maintain your relationship over time by using exercises, homework, weekly affirmations and new habits to learn and practice.
The 8 sessions include:
- Why Marriage?
- From I to We
- Communication
- Making Marriage Work
- Let's Make Love
- From Yours and Mine to Ours
- Keep the Fire Burning
- From this Day Forward
Mary Ortwein, M.S. LMFT
"I never learned anything so simple, yet so profound."
-workshop participant
Mastering the Magic of Love is a 6-8 session relationship skills educational program for couples which teaches the 10 Relationship Enhancement Skills developed by Dr. Bernard Guerney. These skills have been shown in 27 research studies, spanning nearly three decades to help couples improve their relationships and solve problems. The workshop is appropriate for couples who are having troubles and those who want to improve an already good relationship. These are also great skills for premarital couples to learn.
In this workshop, couples learn:
- Cooperation
- Understanding
- Deep intimate communication
- Conflict resolution
- The importance of keeping a positive attitude in marriage
- Following through with commitments
- Using healthy reinforcements to encourage change
- Recognizing and preventing patterns of conflict
- Activities to build affection
During the educational workshop, each participating couple has the opportunity to work through 3-5 significant issues and learn how to put and keep honesty, compassion, empathy and trust in their relationship. Couples learn skills that enable them to reach new depths of understanding of each other. And when they do, problems that once loomed large become manageable.
Relationship Smarts Plus (RS+)
Dr. Marline Pearson
www.dibblefund.org
This course consists of 13 one-hour lessons designed for teens in grades 7-12. It offers practical guidance on navigating the world of teen relationships and how to build healthy relationships now and in the future. Relationship Smarts covers topics such as:
- Attraction and infatuation
- Dealing with rejection
- What is "love"
- Emotions in dating
- Dating and breaking up
- Dealing with a broken heart
- Recognizing unhealthy relationships
- Communication skills
- Relationship "red flags"
- Choosing wisely in the future
Attention is paid to what to say and what to do in the early stages of going out and the "how to's" - that is, how to really get to know someone, how to build a relationship, how to assess a relationship, and how to avoid attachment to problem people.
Throughout this class, teens explore how one can fall in love without losing one's mind, and how relationships grow and change. They are assisted in this exploration with concrete principles for "smart dating," - a low risk dating strategy, and guidelines for assessing relationships for their health and potential.
Teens also learn about the nature and joys of infatuation while being guided in building a realistic concept of love. Group activities, hands-on activities, and the use of media help bring the topics alive. The end goal is to help teens cultivate a "North Star" - that is a long range vision for quality relationships along with the practical knowledge and skills needed to build them.
This course is suitable for schools, youth organizations and youth groups and can be taught with a minimum of special preparation. Thousands of teens in Alabama have already participated in this program. It is shown to be very effective in building teens' understanding of and skills for healthy relationships and future marriages.
Dr. Francesca Adler-Baeder
This 6-session research-based educational curriculum is designed for couples and children in stepfamilies. It focuses on building couple and family strength while addressing the unique needs and issues that face couples in stepfamilies.
Children and adults attend parallel sessions, coming together at the end for a shared activity.
The program uses informational presentations, group discussions, and a variety of media to teach strategies for building healthy relationships and stable stepfamilies. Many crucial stepfamily issues are addressed. Among them are:
- Stepfamily myths
- Realistic expectations for stepfamily development
- Legal issues
- Finances
- Defining roles and rules
- Developing empathy
- Understanding child development
- Building healthy stepparent-stepchild relationships
- Strengthening the couple relationship
- Communicating with your child's other parent
- Building respectful and caring relationships in the stepfamily
The 250+ page curriculum includes everything you need to facilitate this program:
- Leader lesson guides for adult and child programs
- Background readings
- Handout masters
- Resource list
- Pre/post evaluation questionnaires
- 2 videos - the movie "Stepmom" and "Smart Steps Video Vignettes"
- CD with power point slides, handout files, evaluation questionnaires
Together We Can: Caring for My Family
Dr. Karen Shirer
Together we Can is a program that helps mothers and fathers of newborns and young children learn about building healthy relationships with each other and their children through a series of interactive educational experiences. The purpose of the program is to equip unmarried mothers and fathers with skills for making healthy decisions and to explore future options for their relationship, including the potential of getting married.
New parents learn skills for parenting together and strengthening their family unit. The program is offered in Alabama through a 6-8 session education series.
General topics include:
- Road Map to a Stable Family and an Involved Father
- Caring for Myself
- Relating to Others
- Caring for Our Family
The overall goal of this curriculum is to encourage and support stable family formation by building new parents' knowledge and skills. The curriculum is designed to support and equip participants to build and sustain healthy family relationships, and to provide a secure environment for their children. Family research has shown that unhealthy family relationships and environments are prevalent among young families due to lack of skill and knowledge. Participants in this program in Alabama have found the program to be very helpful and enthusiastically recommend it for other parents.
Please direct all inquiries about the program to:
Project Manager
334-844-3227
Alabama Community Healthy Marriage Initiative
Auburn University
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