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What if any of us saw a child about to be harmed? We’d want to do something to help that child! Our challenge is to understand what to do and when to do it.
Kidpower, a global leader in personal safety education, including bullying prevention, child abuse prevention, and stranger awareness since 1989, is inviting all caring adults to join our “One Million Safer Kids” campaign. Our goal is simple: to make one million young people safer in five years or less as a result of greater awareness, knowledge, and skills.
After providing twenty-two years of safety education through Kidpower to over two million people around the world, we’ve seen again and again how a few simple actions can protect young people from most attempts of bullying, violence, and abuse. No matter how long we do this work, our hearts still break each time we hear of a child who has experienced misery and trauma that was preventable!
The One Million Safer Kids Campaign is happening in classrooms, parks, playgrounds, and living rooms around the world. Our Kidpower staff, board members, and volunteers are coming together with parents, educators, and community leaders to take simple steps to create access to age-appropriate personal safety skills and information that can help prevent children and teens from being abducted, abused, threatened, attacked, or bullied.
A world with One Million Safer Kids is a better world for all of us. It is a world with more joyful playgrounds, classrooms, and neighborhoods. It is a world with more relationships strengthened by strong boundary setting skills. It’s a world with less trauma and injury. It is a world where children feel safer because they are empowered. The potential ripple effect of One Million Safer Kids is both staggering and achievable.
By teaching one child one skill, sharing one article with one parent, arranging one workshop for one youth group, or giving one donation to bring skills to a child in need, one adult can make a lifetime of difference to the young people made safer as a result.
What Can YOU Do to Help Create a World with One Million Safer Kids?
- Teach a child a safety skill. It only takes a few minutes and knowing what to do could spare a child misery or even save a child’s life!
- Share information with someone who can use it to keep a child safer. Forward this Kidpower CONNECT article to everyone you know. Post the Kidpower Safety Tips on school and youth group websites. The Kidpower Virtual Library has 100+ free articles. Share them with a parent, a teacher, an educator, a coach, etc. These are easy to access from: https://www.kidpower.org/millionsafer/resources
- Learn more, then show others what you learned. Subscribe to the Kidpower e-newsletter, read an article or one of Kidpower’s books, or take a personal safety workshop for yourself. Through all our efforts, we will educate One Million Safer Kids.
- Like our “One Million Safer Kids” with Kidpower page on Facebook to get easy-to-share information.
Published: December 13, 2011 | Last Updated: December 13, 2011
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.
