By Natalie Hornstein; Community Connections Specialist |

A huge thank you to the Children’s Center of Clackamas County for hosting an awareness event to honor Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month, and to Clackamas Women’s Services, who brought out two puppets from their program “Communities for Safe Kids” to emcee the event. This event also celebrated the Children’s Center’s 20th anniversary, and reflected on the work that have done and continue to do prevent child abuse in our communities.

Through generous funding from the Ford Family Foundation, the Children’s Center partners with ClackCoKids and several other community agencies across the county to provide child sexual abuse prevention trainings.

The name of the training – Darkness to Light – is a metaphor for one of the biggest barriers to prevention. Child abuse and neglect is often hidden in shame, and not talked-about. Darkness to Light aims to reduce stigma, and bring abuse out into the light where it can be prevented with education, awareness and increasing the amount of safe, knowledgeable adults in our community.

The Children’s Center and their partners have provided 139 trainings to 3,709 adults, and live-streamed broadcast trainings to 6,726 viewers in our most vulnerable communities. The goal is to train enough adults so that every school, child care center, or place of gathering for children and families across Clackamas County has at least one adult who has been educated on how to recognize, report, and prevent child sexual abuse and neglect.

Thank you, Children’s Center of Clackamas County, and all our other partners, for taking on this important work to keep the youngest members of our community safe, and free from the traumas of child abuse and neglect.