Champion for Children

The Ford Family Foundation puts up pinwheels that represent the happy childhoods and bright futures that all children deserve on Thursday.

The month of April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. The Ford Family Foundation is a significant advocate for this initiative.

“The Foundation has a long history of prioritizing child protection and the prevention of child abuse and neglect and formally launched a responsive grant program investing in many organizations doing this work,” said Mary Ratliff, Protect Our Children Project coordinator. “There has been awareness and support for Child Abuse Prevention Month for many years, but foundation staff began collectively participating after the launch of the Protect Our Children project in 2015.”

The Ford Family Foundation helps out many organizations that are a part of this program and has a program called Protect Our Children that focuses specifically on child sexual abuse prevention in partnership with 14 non-profit organizations (grantees) in Oregon and Siskiyou County, California.

There are a lot of things The Ford Family Foundation is doing to support this cause.

Ratliff said, “For Child Abuse Prevention Month this year, The Ford Family Foundation staff is: Planting a pinwheel garden on their Roseburg campus and displaying pinwheels in their Eugene office, using a Child Abuse Prevention month virtual background in zoom meetings, wearing blue on April 1 (and to other related events), delivering pinwheel bouquets to every school in Douglas County (along with a thank you and resource sheet), taking advantage of and sharing the opportunity to participate in a Stewards of Children training, attending various Child Abuse Prevention Month related events, or highlighting Child Abuse Prevention month in regularly scheduled meetings, movie screening and discussion of two films: Paper Tigers and Resilience , and lots of social media use to highlight Child Abuse Prevention Month and to share what folks all around Oregon and Siskiyou County, California, are doing to prevent child abuse and protect children.”

There are many places you can learn more.

“Prevent Child Abuse America is a national organization that now takes a leadership role in ‘branding’ Child Abuse Prevention Month and raising awareness and support for child abuse prevention. Oregon has a local chapter, Prevent Child Abuse Oregon. Their website is a great place to start for anyone in Oregon looking to learn more and for ways to get involved,” Ratliff said.

According to the website, www.preventchildabuseoregon.org, “Prevent Child Abuse America launched the national Pinwheels for Prevention® campaign in April of 2008. Since then, over 5 million pinwheels have been displayed nationwide. The campaign symbol, a blue and silver pinwheel, is a reminder of the happy childhoods and bright futures that all children deserve. Prevent Child Abuse Oregon adopted the Pinwheels for Prevention campaign to spread a message of resilience, engage communities, and inspire individual action across Oregon.”

You can also learn more at The Ford Family Foundation’s website, www.tfff.org.

There are lots of ways for the community to show support for child abuse prevention. “Display pinwheels,” Ratliff said. “Visit outdoor pinwheel gardens! Talk about it. Raise awareness and seek education about child abuse statistics, local intervention, and prevention efforts, participate in supporting local non-profits working to end child abuse and neglect.”