Meet Elaine Parke

Recently the NCEF partnered with Mrs. Elaine Parke to become the sole distributor of the Caring Habit of the Month Adventure K-5 curriculum for public schools in Pennsylvania and across the United States.

Mrs. Parke, national expert and pioneer practitioner in the application of multi-media and social marketing strategies to achieve academic and character educational goals, launched her award-winning model, the Caring Habit of the Month Adventure, in 1998., The curriculum is based on the "communities of practice" learning theories of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. In 2006 the Rwandan National Unity and Reconciliation Commission and Rotary International invited Mrs. Parke, to develop a new Caring Habit model for 17 Kigali, Rwanda Schools.

For thirty-five years, Mrs. Parke held leadership positions in corporate consumer marketing firms. She holds two U.S. patents for which she was featured in TIME, Success, VOGUE, and Women's Day Magazines, and became a Who's Who of American Women inclusion in 1983. The Caring Habit of the Month Adventure was awarded the Violence FREE Youth ward by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge in both 2001 and 2002. Five independent and university evaluations document behavioral and academic improvement among students in a Caring Habit school climate. In 2004, the University of Pittsburgh evaluation of Mrs. Parke's Caring Habit community model earned the 2004 Health Education Award from the PA Department of Health. In 1993 the London Institute of Social Inventions designated the model as a "social Invention".

Author of Join the Golden Rule Revolution, Mrs. Parke is an occasional guest lecturer in the field of social marketing at Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins Universities and presents at numerous national educational conferences. She is certified in violence prevention, conflict management, and mediation. Articles by Ms. Parke have appeared in publications of the Pittsburgh Downtowner Magazine, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Secondary School Principals - Schools in the Middle, The Business Ethics Center, The Jefferson Center, and the Educational Digest. Elaine is a 1964 graduate from Northwestern University and also attended Case Western University Graduate School of Business in 1972-73.