The Minnesota Family Formation Project is learning how to help unmarried new parents to form stable families and healthy marriages. We are taking a community organizing approach by engaging with seasoned leader couples in local communities who work with us to put the program on the ground.

We are recruiting unmarried couples who have young children, who say they love each other and want to raise their child together, and who see marriage as a possible goal for their relationship.

We match couples with an experienced mentor couple who can help support them along their journey. We assign a Family Formation Coordinator who will assess the couple's needs and help them access resources such as job counseling, premarital counseling, child support assistance, and parenting education--whatever the couple needs to help them form a stable family. To learn more about why this work is needed, how the project is coming along, and how you can get involved as a mentor or participant couple, click on the appropriate link to the right, under "Links."

This research study is funded jointly by the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Minnesota Department of Human Services. The formal name of The Family Formation Project is "The Minnesota Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Initiative."