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Highlight
Welcoming Jospeph Hawthrone and Karla Mundy to the Board!
Joseph Hawthorne, owner and founder of Block Fitness Collective in Tucson, is committed to improving his community's health, both in the short and long term. Since the opening of his gym one year ago, he has donated $9.82 of every monthly gym membership to Prevent Child Abuse Arizona.
This month, he took another step in his commitment to strengthening families and protecting children by joining our board. Prevent Child Abuse Arizona staff and board members are honored to have Joseph's enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit, and system change ideas as part of our organization’s leadership.
Karla Pinedo Mundy is a small-business entrepreneur and Spanish interpreter based in Scottsdale. Born and raised in Mexico, Karla moved to Arizona in 2015 and, through personal experience, quickly realized how frequently Hispanic communities struggle with language and cultural barriers. As a result, she has become an active advocate of the underserved, helping them overcome business, legal and medical challenges through interpretation, translation, and coaching support.
Her passion for raising awareness and preventing child abuse across all socio-economic sectors stems from her own experience with interfamilial child abuse at a young age. Her lived experience has helped her understand some of the long-term consequences survivors may endure. She is a strong supporter of empowering survivors to break their silence and open conversations with friends and family to begin the healing process.
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Impact Story - The Annual Child Abuse Prevention Conference
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Our 26th Statewide Child Abuse Prevention Conference, this year joined by the 7th Annual Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Consortium Summit was a great success! With the support of eighteen sponsors, including NARBHA, Season for Sharing, and First Things First, from December 15 – 17th, over 800 attendees convened from counties across Arizona to learn, network, and generate solutions to childhood adversity. Our theme, “Connection: The Power of Relationships,” was especially relevant this year. Here's what attendees shared about their most valuable takeaways from the conference/summit:
- “The breadth of knowledge represented was impressive and reflective of the burgeoning field.”
- “It gave me the opportunity to refresh my mind and think beyond current strategies that I utilize to engage when working with families.”
- “The cumulative array of topics was perfect for moving deeper into the action piece of this movement.”
- "The collaboration between ACEs Consortium & Prevent Child Abuse AZ was evident and much appreciated. The connections between adverse childhood experiences, positive childhood experiences, and prevention was powerful!"
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Thomas Claiborne: Hindsight 20/20
An often cliché question: If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?"
If I asked the majority of my peers how they would approach 2020 knowing what they know now, they would most likely tell me they would sit it out. None of us could foresee the rollercoaster ride would endure in 2020. We still don’t know how this will truly impact our education system, economy, political structure, and, more importantly, our mental health and well-being.
Where do we go from here? In this case, I don't think the old cliché holds. Without committed reflection, hindsight does not equal perfect vision. When we share our stories, reflect, and look back to identify patterns, we can move forward stronger. I have a story to tell, you have a story to tell, we have a story to tell. How do we prevent child abuse? Through sharing our stories so we can learn and do better. I want to hear your story. What did you experience in 2020 that could inform the way we collectively move forward? Share your story with me at tclaiborn@gmail.com.
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Essential Workers Child Care Relief Scholarship Program
On December 16th, The Department of Economic Security launched its new program to support essential workers and their families, including health care, first responders, essential government operations, grocery store, and food bank workers, and licensed/certified childcare workers. To learn more about the program and apply, click below:
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Community Conditions that Strengthen Families: Protective Factors Work at the Community Level
In December, the Center for the Study of Social Policy released a report detailing new research on applying the Protective Factors in community-level work. This report includes details about fostering aspects of communities that strengthen families, such as equitable access to essential needs, social support and connection, racial and social justice, and a shift in the "social contract" to include shared community responsibility for child and family well-being.
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Parenting is hard. Parenting in a pandemic is even harder.
When stress hits, to protect children, caregivers need support. They may need information, tools, resources, or just a listening ear. When parents get the help they need, children are protected, safe, and nurtured.
That’s why Prevent Child Abuse Arizona is rallying communities around strengthening families. But we can’t do it alone. We need your help. Prevention of child abuse is at the forefront of public conversations, and we need your help to make sure it stays there. You are the reason that Prevent Child Abuse Arizona has been able to adapt quickly to our changing world. AND, we urgently need your support to make sure this momentum continues.
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Trust Parents.
By Claire Louge, Executive Director
Sometime last year, I heard these two quotes:
“The best way to get trust is to give trust.”
“We can only move at the speed of trust.”
These statements struck me as deeply relevant to how we do our work. Our sector wants safety and well-being for children. And to do that, we know we need to support their parents/caregivers to protect and nurture them. And to support parents, we need to give them trust. Have you ever felt supported without being trusted? Not me.
But trusting parents isn’t the default mainstream lens- yet. Our lens, historically, has been to surveille so we can spot problems. A lens of surveillance, however, is the opposite of trust. Instead, a lens of strength- in which we assume that parents want to do their best and are trying their best in their given circumstance- changes everything. It shifts the culture of surveillance to a culture of trust.
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As a 501(c)3 organization, Prevent Child Abuse Arizona is eligible to receive bequests. Please contact Rebekah Prieto at rebekah@pcaaz.org if you would like to discuss including
Prevent Child Abuse Arizona in your legacy.
Tax ID #86-0832901
Prevent Child Abuse Arizona can only accept donations from individuals, businesses, and foundations located in the State of Arizona.
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Prevent Child Abuse Arizona is shifting the public conversation about child maltreatment so that prevention is the priority. The organization provides research-based prevention services, education and training to help promote strong families and safe, healthy children. For more information, visit pcaaz.org. |
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