SPARK is guided by eight core values. Membership in SPARK is free, but members must commit to uphold these values in their work related to pregnant and parenting students.
1. Collaborative: Promote meaningful communication and collaboration among organizations and individuals
2. Driven by lived expertise: Involve currently or recently parenting students as leaders and collaborators in projects and initiatives
✹ Fairly compensated: Ensure lived expertise collaborators are compensated fairly for their time and knowledge, recognizing that compensation may look different for different people
✹ Realistic: Be flexible with lived expertise collaborators in designing their roles while allowing for growth into leadership—consider offering multiple modes of engagement
✹ Supported: Offer lived expertise collaborators appropriate mentorship and support
3. Cumulative: Build policy and practice work upon insights and lessons from data, research, lived expertise, and past efforts
4. Knowledge sharing: Collect meaningful insights, distill lessons, and share takeaways widely to produce and promote new research wherever possible
5. Credited: Seek out sources of insight and partnership—especially collaborators with lived expertise—and highlight their contributions
6. Self-defined: Respect how each family defines parenting, caregiving, partnership, and membership for themselves
7. Inclusive: Explicitly recognize the intersectional race, ethnic, gender, and class issues parenting students face and how these issues interact with policies and practices
8. Whole family: Recognize that student-parent work is two-generational, and honor the family
Email: Anyone can access to our informative public website and subscribe to a monthly newsletter.
Affiliate: If you align with SPARK values, you can sign up to become a member. Affiliate members receive exclusive online resources, including details on becoming a Constellation member or a SPARKler. There is no cost to become an affiliate, but we want to ensure that those who join at this level are aligned with the core values of SPARK, including an orientation toward collaboration, giving credit where it is due, and engaging parenting students as co-equal partners in the work. Affiliates are eligible to express interest in publishing through SPARK.
Constellation member: Affiliates can join a Constellation—topic-focused communities—and meet synchronously (in meetings) and asynchronously (through online forums and discussions), with Constellation Captain and SPARK Working Board support.
SPARKler: Affiliates can pitch in to make SPARK run by serving as Constellation Captains, review board members, resource curators, newsletter/website editors, or in other key roles. SPARKlers are offered training and an honorarium to support their contributions.