We hosted our first community awareness workshop conducted by Comfort House Child Advocacy Center, Indiana State Police and the Harrison County Sheriff's Department. It was a great success, including many participants from community help organizations such as CASA, educators, volunteers and law enforcement.
All the participants left the workshop feeling more empowered with a better understanding on how to recognize situations and how to better protect our children.
It is our hope to continue offering trainings to our communities in an effort to continually educate on how to recognize and report child abuse, and more specifically child sexual abuse.
Indiana State Police Detective Chris Tucker was one of the presenters at the workshop and said, "This is a real problem that we are facing." He went on to say that we need to educate ourselves because "without adults to intervene, our kids don't have a chance."
Workshop presenters included from left Donna Lloyd, executive director Comfort House Child Advocacy Center, Chris Tucker, Indiana State Police and Carrie Bowers, Harrison County Sheriff's Department.
Pure was applauded by Donna Lloyd, executive director of the Comfort House, for the work we are doing in the schools with prevention. She also stated that the best defense to keep our children safe is an offense. We must be doing prevention and awareness to keep our children safe. She stated that 95% of offenders are known to their victims and victim's family. It's "not" STRANGER DANGER that has been taught for so many years. She suggested that parents be talking with their children about healthy sexuality by age eight, if not sooner.
Other ways parents can protect their children:
- Teach children the correct names for all body parts.
- Tell children that sexual or inappropriate touching is NEVER the child's fault.
- Listen to and believe children if they are trying to tell. Children RARELY lie about sexual abuse.
- If something is not right about a child's relationship with an adult or other child, act on it.
The workshop was filled with staggering statistics such as 1 in 4 females will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday and real life stories about how child sexual abuse occurs.
I encourage everyone to educate yourselves, begin talking with your children and seek resources to use. It is our hope to continue offering resources and workshops to the community as a free service to help transform our communities into safer ones for our children.
Be blessed,
Shari McCutcheon
Director, Pure Education
Pure In the Community
Pure Goes into Juvenile Detention Center
Pure Director Shari McCutcheon and Curriculum Designer Kathy Shelburne took our Sexual Risk Avoidance Program into the Juvenile Detention Center. Both of blown away by the receptiveness of this program by all the students. "The engagement of these students has been beyond our belief. We are so happy to deliver this message of value and hope for their futures," said Shari.
Help Us Grow
New Communities - Who do you Know?
We are wanting to hold more Connect2Pure gatherings in several counties as we begin to build some of our current, and new communities. Counties requesting first time programming, or additional programming include:
Scott County - Austin
Washington County - Salem Middle
Floyd County - New Albany High School
Clark County - Clarksville Elementary
Harrison County - South Harrison
Carroll County - Carroll Co. High School
Please be thinking of who you know in any of these areas who would love to learn more about Pure and how they can become involved. You can send their name and contact information to Sandy at development@connect2pure.com and we will invite them to the gathering in their community.
Parent Resources
Are You on Autopilot?
As busy parents, it’s easy to get into a groove with work, kids, school, and extra-curriculars. We coast on autopilot certain times of the day. It causes us to miss out, and not just on learning the directions to someone’s house. We miss out on conversations with our kids about life. We miss out on really seeing, hearing, and perceiving our kids. But we can practice more intentional living—especially during these three parts of the day.
Click here for full article.
Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
Child sexual abuse exploits and degrades children and can cause serious damage to cognitive, social, and emotional development of a child. As a society, we have a collective responsibility to prevent child sexual abuse.
Click here for full article.
KROGER REWARDS
Thank you to the new enrollees for Community Rewards! If you have not yet signed up, please take a few moments to enroll in Kroger Community Rewards and all your grocery shopping will benefit Pure and impact students in your community. Every little bit helps.
Log onto: www.Kroger.com/communityrewards, and sign up choosing Pure Education Initiative. If you need help signing up, call Sandy Sorrells at 502-693-3480 and she will step you through the process. The more participants we have, the greater rewards for Pure.
