Mom’s Choice Awards Honoree Little Pickle Press is a founding partner for International Child Protection Month. We would like to welcome Kidpower.org co-founder Irene van der Zande to the Mom’s Choice Matters blog.
Read on to learn about Kidpower and (more importantly) what you can do to take action in your community every day, not just during International Child Protection Month.
From Rana Diorio, award-winning author, Little Pickle Press Founder and Chief Pickle,
LPP is excited and grateful to be partnered with such a dynamic, forward-thinking organization. Kidpower and International Child Protection Month are important for our families.
Kidpower.org establishes International Child Protection Month
by Irene van der Zande
Note: This is a lightly modified edition of an article that originally appeared on the Little Pickle Press blog.
Kidpower is honored to have Little Pickle Press as a Founding Partner for International Child Protection Month because of its mission, philosophy, and commitment to excellence. I want to share the Kidpower story: how we started, what we do, and why our nonprofit organization decided to establish International Child Protection Month. I also want to let you know what actions you can take to join us.
It goes back to 1985, when my family was young. On a field trip with eight young children, including my own daughter and son, in a public place with people standing all around, a man suddenly came charging towards us. He was shouting that he wanted to take one of the girls. This was a classic case of the Bystander Effect, because everyone froze, except for me.
I did what I think anyone would do to protect the kids in their care. I put myself in between the man and the children and shouted at him to leave us alone. I then ordered a man standing watching us with his mouth dropped open,
Get over here and help us! Can’t you see these kids are scared?
When this bystander very reluctantly came to stand next to me, the attacker ran away. The kids were fine. What they saw was that I yelled, and the bad guy ran away. But I wasn’t fine. This experience left me with a lot of troubling questions.
What if this man had knocked me down?
What if he had managed even to touch one of the kids? And what about the unprotected children that he probably went on to assault?
After taking a self-defense class for myself to answer the first question, I also wanted to know how to teach kids to be safe with people without making them anxious or scared. Kidpower was born in 1989 out of my search for answers.
Instead of using fear to teach about violence prevention, Kidpower makes it fun to learn to stay safe! Instead of just talking about problems with people, Kidpower provides the opportunity for successful practice of practical tools about the words to say and the actions to take to deal effectively with difficult or dangerous behavior.
When we started, many of our advisers in mental health, law enforcement, and education told us, “If you just teach skills to children, you are not doing your job.” They were clear that parents, teachers and other involved adults should be in charge of their children’s well-being. They have more power and responsibility than what we should expect of a child. We took their guidance to heart.
For 25 years Kidpower has been educating children AND adults. We teach adults what they need to know and do to keep their kids safe and to prepare their children to take charge of their own emotional and physical well-being, including how to develop positive relationships that can enrich their lives.
International Child Protection Month
We established September as the first International Child Protection Month in order to honor, inspire, and support adult leadership worldwide in protecting young people from harm and in empowering them with skills and knowledge for taking charge of their own well-being.
This month, we at Kidpower along with individuals, families, schools, organizations, businesses, and agencies are taking action to honor, inspire, and support adult leadership worldwide to promote and protect the safety and well-being of young people.
We want to thank Little Pickle Press for its partnership, including donating 25% of the sale of its delightful, educational, and empowering books for children to Kidpower.org in recognition of International Child Protection Month and to help support this important initiative. Use the code KidpowerSafe when ordering to show your support, as well.
How You can Take Action – Be Part of the Solution
Every adult who makes the Kidpower Put Safety First Commitment makes life better for kids. Every individual or agency sharing International Child Protection Month information is taking a stand for the safety of young people. Please forrward this blog post to friends, family ,and organizations with young people in their care.
We hope you will join in by learning more and by using and sharing free online posters and other educational resources about actions each of us can take to protect and empower children and teens. You can:
- Make the Kidpower Put Safety First Commitment™
- Make the Kidpower Protection Promise™ to Young People in Your Life
- Become a Child Protection Month Partner
- Act as a Protector of Children and Teens
By taking these actions not just during International Child Protection Month, but EVERY DAY, you will be helping us reach our first-year goal of having 50,000 caring adults pledge this September to live and act in ways that protect the safety and well-being of young people.
For more information, please visit: www.ChildProtectionMonth.org
About Irene van der Zande
From the Kidpower website:
Irene graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in June 1969 with a degree in Psychology. She received her initial training as a VISTA Volunteer, setting up services on Indian reservations and in small towns in Iowa and Nebraska.
Irene trained other volunteers to work in both inner city barrios and rural communities, and her focus on training others to share learning continues today with Kidpower.”
Irene has also written numerous books and articles about self-protection and child development.
Pictured left: Irene van der Zande and Kidpower.org co-founder Timothy Dunphy.
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