Stop The Abuse!

By: Jon Ambriz, Steven Cauley, and James

Chidiac

Issue
Children in the world are constantly being physically and mentally abused by their parents or
caregiver. One in ten children suffer from mistreatment. One in sixteen children suffer from
sexual, emotional, and physical abuse(Baillergeon "Physical Reasoning in Young Infants:
Seeking Explanations for Impossible Events.). What it all comes down to is that it is not the
child's fault for the abuse they are receiving and there is nothing they can really do to stop it.
They feel helpless and trapped in the hands of their abuser. Nearly one in ten children are
witnesses to family violence (Baillergeon "Physical Reasoning in Young Infants: Seeking
Explanations for Impossible Events.). These abused children sadly end up wondering the street
later in life because as soon as they turn eighteen they are dropped from the system and can't stay
in the adoption homes. Some run away and some are eager to leave the foster care system as
soon as they're eighteen. Sadly most of them turn to crime and end up in jail. Our job as a
community is to help these kids when they're young so that when they grow older they will have
the confidence and trust to seek for help and get ahead in life rather than looking back at their
previous life that caused them despair and mistrust.
Mission Statement and Philosophy
Our goal is to spread awareness along with comfort and care for children who are being abused
both publicly and privately in order to give children the chance to be shown love and compassion
and eventually become better citizens.
Protection of the Underprivileged Foundations philosophy is the idea that all children should
have the experience of a loving family, however children who are being abused lack that love.
The ones who are abusing said children are committing a moral and ethical evil that should be
punished by a lifetime behind bars. Digression aside, people who do not know or don't care
about this issue need to be reminded that most of the time the child is defenseless or are too
scared to retaliate. Most children often come out of this abuse physically or mentally scarred and
have problems in their social life later on. All the more reason to motivate us to do what we do,
all children dream of being in a loving home and we're trying to make that dream become a
reality.
Taking action
Child Abuse is a big a problem that has been growing and becoming a big concern. We need to
take action and solve the issue. One way we can do this is by bringing awareness to Foster care
agencies to have better screening when assigning foster parents to children, so that children
don't end up in abusive homes. Some of the children in the foster care system end up being
homeless or end up in jail. It is the community responsibility to care for this children and provide
them loving caregivers who will care for them and help them overcome all their emotional
trauma and help them succeed and become better citizens.
We can help as a community to organize a big brother and big sister program where volunteers
can come together once a week or twice a month to hang out with the children. They could be
their mentors, play games, and have a movie night. The volunteers will be young adults that will

have the energy to deal with different behaviors and attitudes. These volunteers will be trained by
professional counselors who will volunteer their time to train these young adults.
We can create a program where we can team with up lawyers to help ensure that kids make it
into safe homes and are carefully guided through the foster care system. The lawyers can also
represent the kids that have committed some felonies so they can go to rehab centers and not do
jail time. Some of the teenagers are send to jail where they are treated horribly and inhumanely.
They are stripped of all dignity. When people are treated with dignity and respect, that is when
they experience change and are able to once again, realize right from wrong.
Our plan is different from others because we're recruiting volunteer lawyers, social workers,
psychologist, and teachers to join our team to fight for children's rights. With their cooperation
children will be represented with any issue and concern. We want to build a team of professional
volunteers to help us fight injustice and whose best interest is the well being of the child.
Two non-profit organizations, I'm familiar with that deal with child abuse are Royal Family Kids
Camp and Casa Youth center. Royal Family Kids Camp is an organization founded in 1990 by
Wayne and Diane Tesch. Wayne and Diane had a profound sense of joy and urgency to reach out
to battered, abused, and neglected children in the United States. They wanted to see every foster
child, ages 6-12 experience a life changing camp. Therefore, in 1990 Wayne left his full time
position at his local church to begin his journey of changing battered childrens life. Him and his
wife believed that a week of positive memories can actually bring hope to any broken child.
Presently Royal Kids Camp is serving over 6,000 children in 160 camps in 35 states and 11
international countries.
Casa Youth Shelter in Los Alamitos is an organization founded by Myldred E. Jones, a retired
Navy commander, who decided that Southern California needed a safe place for runaway and
throwaway youth, who had no place to go. She believed that no child should be living on the
streets, under freeway overpasses, worrying about their safety and their next meal. Myldred was
passionate about solving the problem of youth homelessness. In 1969 she founded the first
statewide runaway hotline for adolescent youth. Casa Youth Shelter has 12 license beds,
recreation room, a counseling center, a library, and a computer room. Her staff is equipped with
the skills and knowledge to help the trouble youth have a life changing experience and become
successful citizens. The staff along with the youth living in the house are in charge of creating a
variety of outreach programs.
Financial Need Rationale
In order to accomplish what we desire to do we will need a pretty substantial amount of money.
First off our plan is to build a house that can accommodate several children at a time before they
are sent off to proper foster care or foster home. We deduced that we need about $250,000 in
order to build a house, furnish it, and keep it supplied with food and other necessities. Our hope
is that said money will last us long enough that we will show our community that what we are
doing is for the betterment of society as a whole and we can start receiving donations to keep up

with maintenance and supply needs. Our eventual goal is to set up a way that lawyers can come
help some children escape dangerous homes and be put in safer and more loving ones. We
estimate that we'd need $2500 per lawyer and a few hundred more to keep them working for us.
We hope that people understand that we aren't doing this for ourselves but for children who can't
do this on their own, hopefully we can be the shoulder they can lean on.