First of all, I want to thank the many people who have donated to Kidpower in our year-end funding drive, starting with #GivingTuesday and going through tomorrow.
And I want to encourage those of you who have not yet donated to make a contribution now, knowing that your support in any amount will truly make a difference in helping children, teens, and adults of many different abilities and walks of life become safer and more confident.
Together, we can reach the following goals in 2015:
1. Provide effective and empowering personal safety, positive social climate, child protection, and self-defense workshops to prepare tens of thousands of people – especially children and youth in need – to prevent and stop most bullying, violence, and abuse.
2. Publish six (6) new Teaching Books that will make it easy for parents, educators, and other caring adults to use the Kidpower program with the children in their daily lives. In fact, the social stories and illustrated directions will be clear enough that children will even be able to explain and practice these skills with each other!
3. Triple the impact of International Child Protection Month to reach at least 1 million caring adults in September 2015 with resources to inspire, honor, and support adult leadership in protecting young people from harm and empowering them to make safe and healthy choices in their in-person and online relationships.
4. Launch our Kidpower 4 Every School program so that online lesson plans for different ages become widely available to educators, ultimately in many languages.
5. Develop new resources showing how to apply Kidpower’s Positive Practice teaching method, using our practical emotional safety and boundary-setting skills, to address issues such as cyber-bullying, smoking and substance abuse, online safety, and different forms of relationship violence.
Of course, we will also continue to provide new articles, free email consultation, and our extensive online Library to people everywhere, continuing our commitment to “serve locally – and share globally!”
Irene van der Zande, Kidpower Founder and Executive Director
Kidpower Founder and Executive Irene van der Zande is a master at teaching safety through stories and practices and at inspiring others to do the same. Her child protection and personal safety expertise has been featured by USA Today, CNN, Today Moms, the LA Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Publications include: cartoon-illustrated Kidpower Safety Comics and Kidpower Teaching Books curriculum; Bullying: What Adults Need to Know and Do to Keep Kids Safe; the Relationship Safety Skills Handbook for Teens and Adults; Earliest Teachable Moment: Personal Safety for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers; The Kidpower Book for Caring Adults: Personal Safety, Self-Protection, Confidence, and Advocacy for Young People, and the Amazon Best Seller Doing Right by Our Kids: Protecting Child Safety at All Levels.
