Creating and supporting environments where children are protected before and during times of crisis.
Alert Adults
Being an Alert Adult means becoming part of a community of responsible adults around the world who watch for an interrupt potentially risky adult behaviors in order to create and maintain safe environments for children everywhere. Everyone can learn how to identify the behaviors that create vulnerability in our families, communities, organizations and programs. We can find simple, effective ways of intervening that thwart any potentially harmful intent - and raise awareness about the risks among those who actions were not intentional - just thoughtless.
Professional Training
Keeping Them Safe trains professionals in the field in a new paradigm for child sexual abuse prevention. Through this training and development, participants are introduced to a unique focus for prevention and given the opportunity to become someone who trains others to present the program in their organization and their communities.
Comfort Bags
When children are ripped from their homes fleeing from domestic violence, or storms, or a multitude of other crises, they often have to leave everything behind. Comfort bags are just that - a bag of their own with items such as a blanket, a stuffed animal, games, and personal items they can take with them.
Circle of Protection
Elephants exhibit a remarkable behavior of forming protective circles around their calves, serving as an essential defense mechanism against predators. This concept originated with that behavior in mind as it symbolizes this intent of our society.
Alert Adults is working to instill a level of awareness in our society that forms a protective circle around all the children in our lives and brings them a kind of peace and freedom to grow into healthy, responsible adults. Our mission is to fulfill an intention that no child ever have to fear being sexually assaulted by someone that says they care about them.
Being part of the solution
Training professionals to bring this unique approach to child sexual abuse prevention to others in their professional communities and to those responsible for children in the environment is a key piece of the child sexual abuse prevention puzzle. For years we have been teaching adults to recognize children who might have been abused, to deal with disclosures, and to report suspected abuse to authorities. Immediate Response Training, as we call it, is a necessary part of the prevention landscape. As with the circle of protection that is so instinctual for elephants, interrupting abuse that is happening now is a powerful reaction that leads to appropriate action. Keeping Them Safe is simply moving the prevention process upstream to a place where nothing has yet harmed a child. Ensuring that there is no opportunity for abuse to occur is step one and Keeping Them Safe trains and develops professionals in the community to notice and act when something risky is happening.
Comfort in Crisis
Children dealing with crisis - regardless of what is happening - need comfort. They need to know that someone is reaching out with a loving hand to provide a softer landing spot for them. These special bags give members of the community an opportunity to reach into the darkness and bring some light and love to a sometimes tragic and always painful situation. That gift bag is a chance for the child to know that someone cares at a time when that may be difficult to imagine.