Nice Story, Nice Emails

In case you missed it (or ICYMI, as the kids say), I had a story in Sunday’s Journal about the Abriendo Puertas program. The program is basically a national curriculum, aimed at helping Latino parents set their children up for success in school. The curriculum includes things like nutrition, early brain development, and how to advocate for one’s child in the school system.

The program is administered in Albuquerque’s South Valley by the Partnership for Community Action, and folks are also looking to start using it in Farmington and Las Cruces. The program got on my radar after I saw a national study out of Berkeley, showing that parents who took Abriendo Puertas classes had significant improvements in knowledge from pre-tests to post-tests. Then I made some calls and found out the program was happening here in Albuquerque.

This is the kind of story I love to do, and my colleague Roberto took some great pictures that really told the story.

So the nice thing is that since the story ran yesterday, my inbox has had a steady stream of emails thanking me for writing a positive story and spotlighting the Partnership. As you can imagine, I get a lot of email when people don’t like a story I’ve written, but it’s rare to get this kind of consistent, high-volume email after writing what is essentially a positive feature. Emails have mostly been from Albuquerque’s do-gooder community, and I almost suspect an email campaign along the lines of “Let’s thank Hailey for writing positive community news. Then maybe she’ll do it more.” But whether it’s a coordinated effort or a spontaneous outpouring of appreciation, it’s been really nice.