How to keep a family strong: create and keep up family rituals and traditions. Make a big deal out of birthdays and other important dates. Keep a family scrapbook. Do community service projects, like recycling drives, together. Have formal family meetings to discuss issues and problems.

These simple suggestions for family unity are offered by June Mead, editor for family and parent resources on a new World Wide Web site, Children, Youth and Families Education and Research Network, also known as CYFERNet. Mead also is a program evaluator at Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) at Cornell University. Recently she authored an applied bulletin, "Evaluating Home Visiting Programs: A Focus on Parenting and Family Strengths Outcomes." The bulletin, which is based on research conducted by CCE, can be downloaded and used by family workers to evaluate their own programs.

As the editor for family and parent resources for CYFERNet, Mead posts information such as what makes a family strong as one of the resources on the new site. Other specific tips for strengthening families include scheduling periodic family reunions; keeping a letter going among family members with each family member adding to it; developing a family e-mail or chat room; drawing and sharing a family tree; tape recording the life stories of older members of the family; keeping a journal of shared family memories in which various members contribute short essays of memories; and using notes to share encouragement, love and foster better communications.

"Strong families also tend to have clearly defined roles and responsibilities," says Mead, "so make an effort to give each member a specific role." Among the other characteristics of strong families: caring, appreciating and clear, open communicating.

"Parents and families face tremendous challenges. Today, the number of parent education and family resiliency programs is growing to help them. Most of these programs call for a focus on assets building as an empowerment strategy," says Mead.

CYFERNet is a national network of land grant university faculty and county extension educators working to support community-based educational programs for children, youth, parents and families. As Mead adds resources about families and parenting to the new CYFERNet web site, other editors are supplying education resources on children, youth and community. The new web site combines the resources of five previous national web sites: the National Network for Child Care; Collaboration; Family Resiliency; Health; and Science and Technology. The goal of the new web site is to improve access to research-based materials related to strengthening programs for children, youth and families living in high need communities. The site is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Children, Youth and Families at Risk (CYFAR) national initiative.