Kids’ Hope Center & the Community gets charged up with a $5,000 Pacific Power Foundation grant

December 27, 2015

Kids’ Hope Center & the Community gets charged up with a $5,000 Pacific Power Foundation grant

Contact:
Contacts: Barbara Bauder, Chief Development Officer
Bay Area Hospital, 541-269-8543
barbara.bauder@bayareahospital.org

Joanne Shorb, Program Director
Kids’ Hope Center, 541-266-8806
JoAnne.Shorb@bayareahospital.org

Foundation grant powers Kids’ Hope Center

COOS BAY – A grant from the Pacific Power Foundation will help “Darkness to Light, Stewards of Children”, by supporting this community education effort regarding childhood sexual abuse.

The Kids’ HOPE Center, the Child Abuse Intervention Center for Coos County, knows that child sex abuse is a very real issue, not just nationwide or in the State of Oregon, but in Coos County. In 2014, 248 children received services at the Kids’ HOPE Center. Of those 248 children served, 135 cases involved victims of child sex abuse.

The center believes that in order to protect our community’s children, people need to know the signs. Community members need to know what to look for, what behaviors are concerning, and how to report their suspicions. HOPE is an acronym for “H”ealing, “O”utreach, “P”revention, and “E”ducation. At Kids’ HOPE Center we believe that our duty to the children of the Coos community is to do more than just intervene in those cases where abuse has actually occurred. We believe it is our responsibility to educate others in order to help prevent future instances of abuse from ever occurring in the first place. Teaching the Darkness to Light Stewards of Children program will result in providing information to adults in the Coos community who may not know much about childhood sexual abuse, much less how prevalent the issue is in our community. Trained adults will be taught how to recognize and react responsibly to incidents or suspicions of child sexual abuse and could ultimately influence policies or structures within their own agencies with emphasis placed on prevention.

“This training is geared for not just those who work with kids or have kids, this training is for everyone” JoAnne Shorb, Director for the Kids’ HOPE Center says. “We all know children we feel responsible for, whether you are a parent or not. It’s our collective responsibility to make sure our kids are safe and protected. The Stewards of Children training is one way to make sure we are doing everything in our power to do that…”

Thanks to support from the Pacific Power Foundation, the dollars granted to the center will be used to purchase some of the curriculum that will be used to provide the Stewards of Children workshop to community members, free of charge. This program is an important state-wide initiative of the Ford Family Foundation.

To set up a FREE Stewards of Children training for your organization, school, church group, or to participate in a workshop as an individual, please call the Kids’ HOPE Center at 541-266-8806 or email JoAnne.Shorb@bayareahospital.org.

Working with partners such as HOPE locally and the Ford Family Foundation statewide is key to fostering healthy, prospering communities,” said Monte Mendenhall, Pacific Power’s regional community manager. “There is so much needed in rural economies and so often it starts with our kids. This program’s special focus reminds us that everyone can help improve the lives of our neighbors.”

About Pacific Power Foundation

The Pacific Power Foundation is part of the PacifiCorp Foundation, one of the largest utility-endowed foundations in the United States. Its mission, through charitable investments, is to support the growth and vitality of the communities served by Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power.

The foundation was created in 1988 by PacifiCorp, an electric utility serving 1.8 million customers in six Western states. PacifiCorp operates as Pacific Power in Oregon, Washington and California, and as Rocky Mountain Power in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.

For more information on the Pacific Power Foundation, visit www.pacificpower.net/foundation.

About Bay Area Hospital

Bay Area Hospital, owned by the community’s residents and governed by an elected board, is a full-service, acute care hospital located in Coos Bay serving the Oregon Coast. With services including interventional cardiology, cancer services, wound care, robotic and orthopedic surgery, family birth center, imaging and more, Bay Area Hospital is recognized for medical excellence and its mission of improving the health of our community every day.

Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness month is during the month of April. The Center will be planting 248 pinwheels on April 1, with one pinwheel representing each of the 248 children served by the center in 2014.

For more information about Bay Area Hospital or the Kids’ Hope Center, contact Barbara Bauder, Chief Development Officer, Bay Area Hospital, 541-269-8543; or barbara.bauder@bayareahospital.org.