This article reflects on a multi-year project involving participatory research with parents. Specifically, it reports on an ongoing capacity-building endeavor that consciously places parents at the center of a parent education project--wherein parents are regarded as project participants, possessing valued knowledge, rather than as more traditional passive research participants. Based in participatory action research, systematic inquiry methods are used to determine the project issues and engage all participants in co-construction of knowledge. By building capacity in parents, we observed improved outcomes in their own lives as well as in the lives of the children they nurtured. Implications of our study for the growth in public scholarship are explored.