Child Sexual Abuse Prevention/Education

July GlobalGiving Report for P&E

Celebrating Another Successful Academic Year

It’s summertime! Time to celebrate the end of an academic year and switch gears to summer programming and fall planning!

This report is a sad reminder of how quickly life can end but also what a significant impact one person can make in the community. In early April, our agency experienced the sudden death of a beloved staff member that rocked us to the core.   Tragically, Kyle and his wife Kloria passed away suddenly. In honor and memory of Kyle Mathews, who will always be with us in memory and spirit.

April - Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month in April saw P&E staff busily presenting in schools and in the community attending several Kids Safety events. We presented to students in four schools – all were in-person 2- or 3-day presentations every week - as well as attended four community events highlighting prevention and education. Typically, we would have attended more community events, unfortunately, due to the unexpected passing of our employee, Kyle, our agency needed some time to grieve and process his death and thus we eased up on engagements for our staff to mourn.

April also brought the end of a P&E department staff member’s time with the agency to a close. Liza Munoz ended her time with us on April 30^th. Liza left to pursue an opportunity to work in the school system – to which we are grateful that the school system will benefit from our former staff members’ experience and those kiddos will have an advocate watching out for them, however, I’m sad for our loss but happy for their gain. Thus, the search for a new P&E Advocate for secondary schools began.

May - We finished the year strong in May by adding two new elementary schools to our prevention education efforts. The P&E Team celebrated the end of the academic year with lunch at a local establishment known as the Merrillville Floral & Tea House – a very quaint interior and one I recommend that you try to experience if you are in the Northwest Indiana region. The food was delicious! This was a busy month of interviewing applicants to fill the vacancy for the P&E Education Advocate.

June/July - In early June, we conducted a training for summer camp counselors at the Dunes Learning Center. Interviews for replacing our staff member continued but I am happy to say that we hired a replacement department member, Emily Cree, who started with our agency on June 11^th! We are looking forward to Emily joining our team physically in the next couple of weeks as she and her family (husband and doggo) move from North Carolina to Northwest Indiana. Emily graduated in May with her master’s degree in psychology and holds a BA Criminology degree. We believe that Emily will make a wonderful addition to our small department, and we can’t wait to introduce her to our community partners.

Summer activities see Prevention & Education attending various kid-friendly events to spread the word about child safety, taking opportunities to complete professional development, collaborate with community partners, and add to our fall schedule. Speaking of our fall schedule, we have already booked nearly forty schools to present body safety presentations in 2024-25 for Lake County schools! We continue to add to our schedule as schools finalize their 24/25 schedules.

As always, we invite our supporters to contribute to Prevention & Education efforts through the purchase of supplies to be handed out to students during the school year but also at outreach opportunities. Kids love receiving gifts at outreach events, like stickers, pencils, pens, notebooks, bracelets, fidget-gadgets, and other tactile objects that they can manipulate. If you prefer, you can designate funding towards coloring workbooks for grades Pre-K thru 2^nd grade and/or workbooks for grades 3 thru 6, or you can sponsor programming for middle and high school students.

Most importantly, thank you for your support. Knowledge is power…students who know what to do and whom to speak to about their safety is their empowerment.

As we head into Spring, March has come in like a lion with tornadoes in late February in our region.  This was a perfect opportunity to share with our younger students why we are practicing body safety – just like they practice tornado safety to know what to do in the event of a tornado, so do we practice body safety so that they know what to do if they experience “stormy” behaviors or unwanted/inappropriate behaviors.  

The Prevention & Education advocates were back in session and ready to roll, even though we had a holiday break in December, our team was extremely busy December thru February.  We taught body safety prevention education to 9,610 students between December and February!

In the month of December, the P&E department provided prevention education services to four elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and one community teen group for a combined total of 2,880 students.  This was a shortened presentation period since we did not present in the two weeks before the Christmas holiday or the week of New Year’s while schools were out for Winter Holiday break. 

We resumed in the New Year and kicked-off January with a new round of presentations.  We provided prevention education services at 10 schools, presenting to seven elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school for a combined total of 3,602 students. 

Love was in the air and so was our mission to bring awareness to Teen Dating Violence as we continued into February and provided prevention education services to 3,128 students encompassing multiple-day presentations at seven elementary schools, two middle schools, one high school, and one college/university.  Our coordinator attended a keynote address by Erin Merryn, founder of Erin’s Law, at Indiana State University.  It was an honor to meet Erin and know that the work we are doing is in part because of her desire to push through this important prevention education legislation.

Our team is looking forward to a busy March.  We have multiple-day in-person presentations scheduled for six elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school.  We will be wrapping up the academic year in April and will be planning our summer and fall programming in May.  It looks to be a busy end of the year.

We love when our younger students sing along with the Boundaries song, want to give us hugs but ask first, and draw us pictures.  It’s also heart-warming to know that you have reached a middle- or high schooler when they stop to talk with you after a presentation, or that you have empowered them to speak with a safe adult and report an experience that happened to them.  Knowing that we have saved at least one student encourages us to keep doing what we’re doing.

The next couple of months will see us winding down for the academic year and ramping up for the summer and fall. We’ll provide you with an update this summer on all the exciting plans we have in store for summer and fall!

Photos:

1) Healthy Behaviors sign video to recognize teen dating violence awareness

2) Erin Merryn (Erin's Law) and Jennifer Potter (P&E Coord.)

3) Word Cloud used during Teen Safety Matters presention to high school students

4) Drawings by elementarty school students

5) Students watching the elementary presentation "Consent" video

6) Teen Safety Matters high school presentation discussing Human Trafficking with P&E Coord.