Increase Your Awareness. Help Support Children.

By Amanda C. Jones, PBB Grants Officer

April is National Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month.

Right now, Psychology Beyond Borders’ two main projects focus on supporting children and young people overcoming the impact of traumatic events. In Indonesia, it’s school children impacted by the May 27, 2006 earthquake. In Sierra Leone, it’s young people who were affiliated with fighting forces during the country’s ten-year civil war. Either way, right now we’re focused on youth and on figuring out how to support them and help them better their lives when they’re dealing with trauma.

So, it seems appropriate to draw attention to the fact that April, just next month, is National Child Abuse Awareness (and Prevention) Month in the United States.

Tools for educating young people about young people…

By Amanda C. Jones, PBB Grants Officer

Education.
It’s a part of the mission at Psychology Beyond Borders, or PBB.  Education helps people know how to prepare before disasters.  Education helps people cope in response to disasters.  Education helps people to help other people cope in response to disaster.  And more broadly, education can help us all to understand the challenges that other people face.

Young People.
If we think that young people are the world’s future, that we’re passing everything on to them, and education is a way to prepare kids for the future, then I think we need to teach kids about each other’s lives and each other’s challenges.  PBB is involved in helping people and communities to recover from large-scale disasters, and those are scary.  But when we’re teaching youth and children about disasters, it’s important to figure out a way to give them information without giving them nightmares.