Doing Right by Our Kids–empowering parents to be child safety and abuse prevention advocates

It has taken me a few weeks to get my feet on the ground in the New Year, but I am excited about 2012. I an writing a new book with Kidpower co-founder Irene van der Zande, Doing Right by Our Kids: Protecting Child Safety at All Levels of Society. I have been doing much of my blogging over at www.DoingRightByOurKids.com and I encourage you to follow my evolving work there, as Irene and I craft a new book and involve readers in the process. We just can’t wait to start sharing key skills and information with you, so online outreach will pave the way for the book.

Irene and I have been committed to the core idea of “Protecting Child Safety at All Levels of Society” from the inception of this project, but it was a bit hard to explain until the Penn State abuse scandal broke last fall. Now people understand why parents need to know what to do to prevent abuse AND that schools, faith communities, sports teams, and all child-serving organizations need to be actively involved as well. Secrecy and silence is so much a part of the cultural umbrella that allows abuse to happen that I have truly come to believe that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Doing Right by Our Kids will give you many tools to be part of the solution and to gather allies to create grassroots pressure “up” the ladder of command when you need organizations to be more aware and involved. We empower kids as well, drawing on the skills that Kidpower has already taught to over two million people worldwide, and beyond that, the new book will emphasize the organizational change and cultural change that is needed to allow children to truly move with safety and confidence through society.

One thing I really love about Kidpower is that it is so positive. I don’t think I could spend years of my life just fighting against a negative. Working as a Kidpower instructor allows me to fight against abuse while teaching kids safety skills in a positive, effective, realistic way that operates through success rather than fear. I highly recommend Kidpower workshops for EVERYONE. However, this year I am stepping back from my own role of teaching workshops in order to write the news book and create other resources that can reach hundreds and thousands of people at once, rather than 10-20 people at a time. Our book project is evolving at a good time, as Kidpower has launched the One Million Safer Kids Campaign, which DoingRightByOurKids.com is participating in as an official partner.

Since last July, the campaign has already reached over 155,000 children!

So keep your eyes on MojoMom.com for news and updates related to all of my work–I will be doing a renovation to the website for 2012 to bring all my writing and teaching interests into one site. And in the meantime, I hope you will check out what we are offering through DoingRightByOurKids.com and all the resources offered by Kidpower’s One Million Safer Kids campaign.