Defending Childhood
“Being a child is time of innocence, learning, and growth. We need to protect our children from those who would exploit or abuse them. We need to defend their innocence and enable them to grow up in a safe and nurturing environment. We need to assist in recovery for those who have experienced abuse. We need to interfere with networks built to exploit children and assist law enforcement in their missions.”
Robert Kiffney
Protecting Children from Abuse
To protect our children from abuse, we work closely with educators and social workers and law enforcement to identify children at risk. We provide information to help determine abuse and break down barriers to helping children get support.
In cases that do not warrant separation of the child from a home, we will offer support to the family to attempt to improve the situation. This may involve counseling, parenting classes, food/medical support, babysitting, or drug treatment.
Provide Safe and Nurturing Environments
To provide safe and nurturing environments, we support several youth campus environments that provide temporary or long-term care to children removed from an unsafe environment. As we provide operational support, we work with them to encourage increasing capacity to meet the backlog of needy children.
Assist in Recovery
Recovery takes many forms. We research cost-effective methods to deliver therapies to youth in the environment that works for them. This may be individual or group counseling, mentorship, animal therapies, sports equipment, job training, peer support, and any other methods that are impactful.
Disrupting Networks Exploiting Children
In an effort to curtail the steady stream of abused and trafficked children in the US and elsewhere, we support several programs that target child traffickers. We provide tools to law enforcement to assist in identifying and making arrests in child trafficking and pornography.
We additionally work with local governments and retail facilities to install cameras to support law enforcement efforts to combat kidnapping of youth and teens. We support the efforts of other foundations to educate children and parents on the risks of child abduction.