By Jennifer Potter | Prevention & Education Coordinator
July GlobalGiving Report for P&E
Celebrating Another Successful Academic Year
It’s summertime! Time to celebrate the end of an academic year and switch gears to summer programming and fall planning!
This report is a sad reminder of how quickly life can end but also what a significant impact one person can make in the community. In early April, our agency experienced the sudden death of a beloved staff member that rocked us to the core. Tragically, Kyle and his wife Kloria passed away suddenly. In honor and memory of Kyle Mathews, who will always be with us in memory and spirit.
April - Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month in April saw P&E staff busily presenting in schools and in the community attending several Kids Safety events. We presented to students in four schools – all were in-person 2- or 3-day presentations every week - as well as attended four community events highlighting prevention and education. Typically, we would have attended more community events, unfortunately, due to the unexpected passing of our employee, Kyle, our agency needed some time to grieve and process his death and thus we eased up on engagements for our staff to mourn.
April also brought the end of a P&E department staff member’s time with the agency to a close. Liza Munoz ended her time with us on April 30th. Liza left to pursue an opportunity to work in the school system – to which we are grateful that the school system will benefit from our former staff members’ experience and those kiddos will have an advocate watching out for them, however, I’m sad for our loss but happy for their gain. Thus, the search for a new P&E Advocate for secondary schools began.
May - We finished the year strong in May by adding two new elementary schools to our prevention education efforts. The P&E Team celebrated the end of the academic year with lunch at a local establishment known as the Merrillville Floral & Tea House – a very quaint interior and one I recommend that you try to experience if you are in the Northwest Indiana region. The food was delicious! This was a busy month of interviewing applicants to fill the vacancy for the P&E Education Advocate.
June/July - In early June, we conducted a training for summer camp counselors at the Dunes Learning Center. Interviews for replacing our staff member continued but I am happy to say that we hired a replacement department member, Emily Cree, who started with our agency on June 11th! We are looking forward to Emily joining our team physically in the next couple of weeks as she and her family (husband and doggo) move from North Carolina to Northwest Indiana. Emily graduated in May with her master’s degree in psychology and holds a BA Criminology degree. We believe that Emily will make a wonderful addition to our small department, and we can’t wait to introduce her to our community partners.
Summer activities see Prevention & Education attending various kid-friendly events to spread the word about child safety, taking opportunities to complete professional development, collaborate with community partners, and add to our fall schedule. Speaking of our fall schedule, we have already booked nearly forty schools to present body safety presentations in 2024-25 for Lake County schools! We continue to add to our schedule as schools finalize their 24/25 schedules.
As always, we invite our supporters to contribute to Prevention & Education efforts through the purchase of supplies to be handed out to students during the school year but also at outreach opportunities. Kids love receiving gifts at outreach events, like stickers, pencils, pens, notebooks, bracelets, fidget-gadgets, and other tactile objects that they can manipulate. If you prefer, you can designate funding towards coloring workbooks for grades Pre-K thru 2nd grade and/or workbooks for grades 3 thru 6, or you can sponsor programming for middle and high school students.
Most importantly, thank you for your support. Knowledge is power…students who know what to do and whom to speak to about their safety is their empowerment.
By Jennifer Potter | Prevention & Education Coordinator
By Jennifer Potter | Prevention & Education Coordinator
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