This month’s theme for The Social Justice Challenge is poverty.

We all know what poverty looks like, right? We see it on our streets daily – the homeless sitting on street corners, the elderly struggling to pay for medications and groceries, the young who are often hungry and sad. Most of us probably have a vision in our heads of who the poor are and why they ended up that way. Some of our visions may be correct; some may be based on myths…but regardless, we cannot deny that poverty is a huge problem globally.

When I thought about what I wanted to do for this month’s theme, I decided I wanted to look at poverty differently. I did not want to feel hopeless about it. I wanted to understand how individuals could tackle the issue of poverty and find a solution for it. That thought process led me to read a book which brings a new vision to the idea of poverty. That book led me to an organization which is about “supporting choice, not charity, and embracing dignity, not dependence.” Below I’ve given you some information about both the book I read this month, and the organization which I have joined in order to have a positive impact on one of the biggest problems humanity faces: Poverty.

Book Read: The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz (Completed July 17, 2010; rated 5/5; read my review)

This is a fantastic book – hopeful and optimistic, it follows the journey of the author from America (where she was educated as an international banker) to Africa, India and Pakistan. The author is the creator and founder of The Acumen Fund which offers a revolutionary approach to ending poverty in the world. I loved the book and highly recommend it.

Action: Joined the Acumen Fund Community

Their vision:

[...]working toward a world where every human being has access to the critical goods and services they need—affordable health care, water, housing, energy—so that they can make choices for themselves and pursue lives of greater purpose.  This is where dignity starts—not just for the poor but for everyone on earth.

How they do it:

Using the compassion of philanthropy and the rigor of the marketplace, Acumen Fund brings together the best of business and charity. We invest patient capital to identify, strengthen, and scale transformative businesses with the aim of effectively serving millions—and someday billions—of the world’s poorest.

Check out some of their events.

FAQs about The Acumen Fund.

As part of the Social Justice Challenge in May, I decided to make a quilt for an organization called Quilts for Kids whose mission is:

Transforming discontinued, unwanted and other fabrics into patchwork quilts that comfort children with life-threatening illnesses and children of abuse.

I finished this quilt over the weekend and mailed it off today where it will get a label and be sent to a child in a hospital. Quilts for Kids have distributed thousands of quilts for children with terminal illness who are in hospitals nationwide. Check out the gallery of quilts on their site. Want to make a quilt for this organization? Visit this page for FAQs.

Here is my finished quilt (click on photos to enjoy a larger view):

Haregewoin had one color photo of Atetegeb holding her baby. She enlarged this photo until its lines turned all pastel and soft. She framed it and centered it on the wall above the sofa. She framed a smaller black-and-white photo of Atetegeb and Suzie as teenagers laughing together. Under the glass she placed a slip of paper upon which she’d typed the words from a pop song: “There is no me without you.”

A child cannot live without a mother or father. A mother or father cannot live without the child. - from There is No Me Without You, page 134 -

A widowed, middle-class woman grieves for her daughter who dies horribly from AIDS. More than a year later, depressed and still mourning, she enters a church to request a hut in the cemetery near her daughter’s grave – she has decided to go into seclusion and live out the rest of her life in grief. Instead of seclusion, however, the priest offers her something different – to become a foster mother to an orphaned teenage girl whose mother has died from AIDS. The decision to accept the priest’s offer is a turning point for  Haregewoin Teferra and her life begins again.

She had lost her daughter. And God sent her these precious children. - from There is No Me Without You, page 259 -

There is No Me Without You is Haregewoin’s story told by award-winning journalist Melissa Fay Greene. When Haregewoin took in her first orphan, her heart was opened to the plight of her country’s children. Thousands of Ethiopians were dying from a virus with no cure, and leaving behind their children who were shunned because of fear. The options for these children were few – many ended up on the streets, starving, selling sex for food, or dying from the same disease which had taken their parents. Haregewoin Teferra was an angel of mercy. Very quickly she  found her small home filled with children who had no other place to go.

Greene provides the historical backdrop for the AIDS pandemic in Africa which later made its way to every country in the world. She explores the variety of theories about why AIDS arrived in the human population…the most compelling of these being the theory of serial passage – that a weak pathogenic virus is strengthened through mutation of the virus as it is injected from one host to another. In the case of AIDS, unsterile injections of vaccines in third world countries may have been the genesis of the disease whose roots have been found in African monkeys. I was shocked to learn that even as late as 2000, there was an estimated thirty to fifty billion unsterile injections occuring per year…even though a single-use autodestruct disposable syringe had already been developed. Why were these new syringes not being used? Of course, the reason is money.

Global health experts agree that safer needles are a crucial step toward eradicating the iatrogenic spread of diseases, but where will the funding come from? WHO’s budget is insufficient and the big donors are not coming forward. - from There is no You Without Me, page 84 -

Greene reveals the incredible poverty and poor delivery of medical services which has allowed AIDS to continue killing people by the thousands in Africa, while in the United States people are surviving the disease because of access to life saving drugs. She examines the greed of the pharmaceutical companies who initially charged upwards of $15,000 per year for the latest AIDS drugs, while production costs for those drugs were somewhere in the range of $200. Patent protection contributes to the inability for poor countries to acquire the medications needed to save their communities. When GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) patent on AZT expired in 2005, generic drug makers were able to provide the drug for $105 per year, a marked decrease from GSK’s price of $3893.64 per year. Despite the ability to now provide generic first line AIDS drugs to patients, multinational drug companies continue to fight for exclusive patents on the second line drugs…a move that makes them out of reach for poor countries.

The statistics Greene shares with her readers is stunning and heartbreaking; the numbers staggering:

• 81% of Ethiopia’s people live on less than two dollars a day; and 26% live on less than a dollar a day (page 12)
• By 1999, UNAIDS estimated that 33 million people around the world were living with HIV/AIDS and that 16.3 million people worldwide had died from the disease. (page 113)
• In 2000, AIDS had killed more than twenty-one million people, including four million children. More than thirteen million children had been orphaned by AIDS – twelve million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty-five percent  of those lived in two countries: Nigeria and Ethiopia. (page 20)
• By 2000, Ethiopia had the world’s third-largest HIV/AIDS-infected population, trailing only India and South Africa. (page 117)
• Spending on health per person in Ethiopia in 2002 was two dollars per year – across all of  sub-Saharan Africa during that time, it was ten dollars per person per year (page 14)
• In 2005, Ethiopia had 1,563,000 AIDS orphans; and 4,414,000 orphans from all causes – the second highest number in Africa (page 268)
• In 2006, 4.7 million people were in immediate need of lifesaving AIDS drugs, but only 500,000 had access to them. During that time, sixty-six hundred Africans were dying each day of AIDS. In Zimbabwe, a UNICEF report stated that every twenty minutes a child either died from AIDS or was orphaned by the disease. (page 25)

The hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic in Africa are the children who continue to be orphaned by this disease. They are also the most innocent of victims – often being born HIV positive because their mothers are ill with the disease.

In North America and Europe, it had been discovered that triple-dose combination therapies, beginning twenty-eight weeks into a women’s pregnancy, could reduce transmission of HIV to the baby by 98 percent and save the mother, too. Public health campaigns, counseling, prenatal care, and ARV therapy for HIV-infected pregnant women in the United States reduced childhood infections to below 2 percent of births. In 2002, the number of new cases of pediatric AIDS was ninety-two.

And in 2003, fifty-nine.

But fewer than 10 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women in Africa had access to these drugs.

So, in Ethiopia, the number of new pediatric cases in 2003 was roughly sixty thousand. - from There is No Me Without You, page 214 -

In light of these kinds of statistics, Haregewoin’s mission to help the children of her country is even more poignant. Greene’s writing is compelling. She intersperses the facts with beautiful descriptions of Africa and its people. She captures the stories of individual children with a tenderness which made my heart ache. Many of the children mentioned in the book go on to find homes in adoptive families. Some do not.

Perhaps the strongest element of this book was Greene’s portrayal of Haregewoin herself. No one is perfect, but it would have been easy for Greene to place Haregewoin on a pedestal – make her into a saint. Instead, Greene describes Haregewoin’s weaknesses, struggles and ultimate triumph through a lens of honesty. Times were not easy. Choices made were not always the right ones. And yet, imagine stepping forward to take on what Haregewoin Teferra took on. She was essentially a volunteer who lived, breathed, and slept her mission of saving children. Sadly, Haregewoin passed away from natural causes last year. Her work, however, continues to live on.

There is No Me Without You is another one of those books which is hard to read. It is painful. At times it made me angry. There seems to be no end to the suffering in Africa. And yet, it is also a book which is important to read. There is hope within the pages – a glimpse of the humanity and kindness that can overcome the worst of situations. And for that reason, it is a book I recommend.

Visit the author’s website.

How you can help.

Help Ethiopia Reads – donate books to Ethiopian Libraries and connect children to books.

Everything is Broken by Emma Larkin
ISBN 978-1-59420-257-5
264 pages
The Penguin Press (2010)

Welcome to my TLC Book Tour of Everything is Broken. This is a stark, moving book which I highly recommend (read my review). Emma Larkin is the pseudonym for an American who was born and raised in Asia, studied the Burmese language at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She lives in Bangkok, Thailand, and has been visiting Burma for close to fifteen years.

You can read more reviews of the book by following the links on the TLC Book Tour site.

Good nonfiction should motivate the reader to want to know more about the subject, and Larkin’s book Everything Is Broken did just that for me.  I am a little embarrassed to admit that before I read The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly last month, I had no idea how bad things were in Burma. Then I agreed to this TLC tour of Emma Larkin’s book where she explores the tragic aftermath of Cyclone Nargis  in Burma in 2008, when the Burmese government refused foreign aid to the detriment of its people. For all intents and purposes, the response of the regime was genocide.

Trigger warning: the following video was taken by amateur videographers in the days following Cyclone Nargis and shows images which may be disturbing to some people:

Compelled to learn more about the human right’s abuses and lack of freedom in Burma, I did a little research on the topic. Below are some of things I wanted to share with you, as well as  links to websites which will help you learn more and discover how you can take action.

Learn more about Aung Sang Suu Kyi:

Read her 1990 Freedom From Fear speech.

Read her biography.

Why Are They Afraid of Aung Sang Suu Kyi?

Loss of Freedom:

Read about the history of Freedom of Speech violations in Burma.

View a moving video about the 2007 crackdown against Burmese monks:

Take Action:

Learn more about Burma and TAKE ACTION by visiting US Campaign for Burma:

• Contact your senator by phone or email to request a renewal of the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act (Senate Joint Resolution 29).

Each year, the Senate must vote to renew the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act. This year, seven leading Senators – Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), John McCain (R-AZ), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Judd Gregg (R-NH), and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) – have introduced a Senate Joint Resolution 29 to renew the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act.  This year, we need your help to get as many Senators on board as possible to make a strong impact! We need your help to help Burma.

• Support a UN Commission of Inquiry into the regime’s war crimes and crimes against humanity

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, released a groundbreaking report to the UN Human Rights Council calling for a Commission of Inquiry into Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes in Burma, after nearly a year of being bombarded by our demands. This is the first time an acting UN official has called for such strong action.

• Arrest yourself in 2010 to show solidarity with solidarity with Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma.

• E-mail your representative urging them to co-sponsor Resolution 898 to help end abuses committed by the Burmese Junta.

Other excellent websites providing information on Burma:

• Burma Democratic Concern

[...]the global campaigning and lobbying organisation to restore democracy, human rights and rule of law in Burma where everyone can enjoy the freedom of speech, press, beliefs, assembly and rule of law that emphasizes the protection of individual rights. Burma Democratic Concern (BDC) has the firm determination, dedication and devotion to keep on working until the democracy restore in Burma.

• Burma VJ

The VJs and individual activists in this film took great personal risks to get this story out to the world. A number of them are currently incarcerated as a result of their roles in the Saffron Revolution. After careful consideration of each case, the DVB decided to campaign on behalf of the following individuals: Htin Kyaw, Su Su Nway, Ohn Than, Sithu Maung, Ko Win Maw. This is the first time it has ever released names for such a campaign.

Show your support – write to the United Nations now.

• Free Burma Coalition

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and the Penguin Press for providing me the opportunity to read Emma Larkin’s moving story of Burma…and for motivating me to learn more and take action.

There is a Burmese phrase that perfectly described the limited amount of aid being delivered after the cyclone versus the enormity of the need: As the phrase goes, it was like tossing sesame seeds into the mouth of an elephant. – from Everything is Broken, page 46 -

The willingness expected of a soldier is encapsulated in the Burmese expression that a cup must be filled with water even if it is cracked or broken. As a Burmese man explained to me, “If a commanding officer says, ‘Get me a cup of water,’ the soldier must fulfill the order, whether or not the cup is broken. There are no excuses.” – from Everything is Broken, page 143 -

In May of 2008, a Category 4 cyclone dubbed “Nargis” reached the coast of Burma and charged through the Irrawaddy Delta (a flood basin for Burma’s main river). Hundreds of farming and fishing villages which were home to thousands of people were devastated. In some cases, 90% of the people living in a village were killed. But it was not the storm itself which shocked everyone, but the response of Burma’s government.

In neighboring Thailand, the U.S. government had loaded a C-130 cargo plane with lifesaving relief supplies that would have taken just under an hour to reach Burma, but the craft was not given clearance to land at Rangoon’s airport. The United Nations World Food Programme had three planes ready to fly in from Bangladesh, Thailand, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The planes were loaded with vitamin-fortified biscuits for hungry survivors who may have not been able to eat for some days and would be in need of instant nourishment. These biscuit-laden planes were also denied clearance. A flight from Qatar carrying relief materials and aid workers managed to land at Rangoon airport but was immediately forced to take off again without unloading any of its contents. – from Everything is Broken, page 8 -

The Burmese government denied foreign aid in the critical weeks following the storm – a time when most experts believe people might have been saved. Instead tens of thousands perished. Even when aid was allowed into the country, the regime restricted the movement of aid workers into the hardest hit areas, allowing only untrained Burmese employees to distribute supplies and provide assistance to the people in the Delta area.

Burma is controlled by a military regime headed by Than Shwe, an uneducated village boy who rose through the ranks to become the country’s top leader. Fueled by the need for complete control over its people, the Burmese regime ignores human rights, restricts freedom of speech, quickly eliminates any organized protests, and imprisons anyone who dares stand up against its actions.

Emma Larkin has been traveling to Burma over the last fifteen years. She writes under an assumed name to protect her contacts there. In Everything is Broken, she reveals the history of the Burmese government and how that history impacted the response to cyclone Nargis. Not only does Larkin cover the nationwide uprising against the government in 1988 (where soldiers shot into crowds of people killing an estimated three thousand citizens), but she also takes a look at the events of September 2007 when a mass protest by Buddhist monks ended in a government crackdown where monks and citizens were beaten, killed and imprisoned – made more shocking because of the revered status of monks in Burmese society. She also introduces readers to Aung San Suu Kyi, a Noble Peace Prize winner (1991) and Burmese opposition party leader (she won the general election for Prime Minister in 1990 but has never been allowed to serve), who has spent most of the last twenty plus years under house arrest because of her political stance.

But perhaps the strongest element of Larkin’s reportage is when she illuminates the people and culture of Burma. In the months following the storm, Larkin managed to travel through some of the most devastated areas. She spoke with villagers who had lost everything, and recorded their stories. She experienced first hand the grief and loss.

The dead had become indelibly etched into people’s memories and onto the landscape. The bodies of people and carcasses of farm animals that floated in the waterways during the weeks after the cyclone had now sunk beneath the surface, but at low tide the waters would recede and reveal anonymous piles of bones slick with the fertile, alluvial mud of the delta. – from Everything is Broken, page 196 -

In a country where speech is controlled, and even the peoples’ memories of events are rewritten, Larkin’s dedication to giving voice to the people of Burma is moving. The Burmese government does not allow for collective memory because to do so might give the people power to rise up. Larkin eloquently writes of the effect this silencing has on the Burmese people:

By maintaining a effective gag order on all public forums, the regime ensures that there is no space for any collective remembrance. Only the regime’s version of the truth remains to be seen or read. As a result, recent historical events – no matter how earth-shattering or all-consuming – are remembered only in private. Because people cannot compare their experiences easily or openly, past events become distorted and intensely personal. In isolation, these memories evolve into the kind of twisted secrets that can end up breaking people. – from Everything is Broken, page 219 -

Larkin is a gifted writer who writes with sensitivity and authority about a country which is divided by the moral, nonviolent principles of the Buddhist tradition, and the intensely oppressive rule of the government. The contrast between these two aspects of Burmese society is stunning. Larkin captures the beauty of the culture and the gentleness of the people of Burma in her narrative. Everything is Broken is not simply a summary of Burma’s history, but it is an exploration of a people who are still struggling to find hope in a broken society.

In a society where nothing can be taken for granted, distorted truths, half stories, and private visions are, by necessity, woven into the popular narrative of events. Burma is a place where the government hides behind convoluted smoke screens. It is a place where those who sacrifice themselves for their country must go unrecognized and can only be lauded or remembered in secret. It is a place where natural disasters don’t happen, at least not officially, and where the gaping misery that follows any catastrophe must be covered up and silenced. In such an environment, almost anything becomes believable. – from Everything is Broken, page 258 -

Everything is Broken is a difficult book to read. It uncovers the suffering and desolation of a country and its people. But it also offers up the beauty found in Burma – the beauty of an ancient culture, of the people who find ways to keep going in spite of the oppression, and of the stories of redemption and hope which cannot be silenced. Emma Larkin’s book is a must read for those who want to know the truth about Burma and its people, and for those who do not want to close their eyes to the injustices in the world. Eloquent, marvelously crafted, and expertly researched…Everything is Broken is highly recommended.

Read my TLC Book Tour where I provide video and links to websites, and a call to action re: Burma.

Read other reviews of this book:

• Word Lily
• The Little Reader
• Heart 2 Heart
• Cafe of Dreams
• Books Movies and Chinese Food
• Book Addiction
• Lit and Life
• Sophisticated Dorkiness

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher through a TLC Book Tour for review on my blog.

**Enjoy a larger view on all photos with a click

Now that I’m back from New York City, I decided to get busy on this project. Yesterday I cut all the fabric, laid out the design and then pieced about half of the quilt top. Today I got really motivated and pieced the rest of the top and attached the borders. Then I decided to do a pieced back as well…but I kept it all really simple.

This is about as simple a quilt as you can make – simply cut 5.5″ squares arranged as you like into rows…then stitch them together. I used only  one border which is 1.5″ wide. The back is just strips of certain fabrics I really loved inserted between two strips of the main backing fabric. The main fabric for this quilt is Wendy Slotboom‘s Lily Pond – I love the pinks and calm greens in this fabric…and it is fun with the turtles and frogs. I used some other coordinating fabrics in my stash as well. The total size is going to be about 43″ X 38″ which is a good size for a lap quilt for a child.

I hope to have this quilted and bound by next weekend so I can send it off to Quilts for Kids. I like to imagine some child finding comfort beneath its folds!

**This last photo is of the pieced back

This month’s Social Justice Challenge theme is AIDS. I remember when AIDS was all over the headlines – I was a new physical therapist living in the San Francisco Bay area and the fear around this illness was rampant … and so were the misconceptions and myths. Luckily, we are now all better educated about this disease and how it spreads. But I thought I would post a few facts about AIDS:

AIDS is not the same as HIV:

HIV stands for ‘human immunodeficiency virus’. HIV is a virus that infects cells of the human immune system and destroys or impairs their function. Infection with this virus results in the progressive deterioration of the immune system eventually leading to ‘immune deficiency’. Infections associated with severe immunodeficiency are known as ‘opportunistic infections.’ AIDS stands for ‘acquired immunodeficiency syndrome’ and the diagnosis of AIDS is based on signs, symptoms, infections, and cancers associated with the deficiency of the immune system that stems from infection with HIV. SO, someone can be infected with the HIV virus, but not yet have acquired AIDS.

Diagnosis:

The only way to determine whether HIV is present in a person’s body is by testing for HIV antibodies or for HIV itself. The majority of people infected with HIV, if not treated, develop signs of HIV-related illness within 5-10 years, but the time between infection with HIV and being diagnosed with AIDS can be 10–15 years, sometimes longer. – from Un-AIDS Fast Facts -

Transmission:

HIV is spread by sexual contact with an infected person, by sharing needles and/or syringes (primarily for drug injection) with someone who is infected, or, less commonly (and now very rarely in countries where blood is screened for HIV antibodies), through transfusions of infected blood or blood clotting factors. Babies born to HIV-infected women may become infected before or during birth or through breastfeeding after birth. – from the CDC website -

Other facts about transmission:

• Health care workers have been infected with HIV after being stuck with needles containing HIV-infected blood or, less frequently, after infected blood gets into a worker’s open cut or a mucous membrane (for example, the eyes or inside of the nose).
• Mosquitoes do NOT transmit HIV infection. HIV does not survive well in the environment, making the possibility of environmental transmission remote.
• Casual contact through closed-mouth or “social” kissing is not a risk for transmission of HIV.

HIV has been found in saliva and tears in very low quantities from some AIDS patients. It is important to understand that finding a small amount of HIV in a body fluid does not necessarily mean that HIV can be transmitted by that body fluid. HIV has not been recovered from the sweat of HIV-infected persons. Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV. – from the CDC website -

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This month I intend to read a non fiction book by Melissa Fay Greene titled: There is No Me Without You. This is a story about Mrs. Haragewoin, a middle-class Ethiopian widow who turned her home into a refuge for hundreds of children with AIDS.

Melissa Fay Greene is an award winning journalist who has written about many topics of social justice including civil rights, coal mine disasters, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. To learn more about Greene and her work, visit the author’s website.

ACTION STEP:

I have decided to join the amazing people over at Quilts for Kids and craft a quilt for a sick child. Quilts for Kids distributes quilts in the United States to children in hospitals who are battling life-threatening illnesses, including AIDS. Their mission statement:

Transforming discontinued, unwanted and other fabrics into patchwork quilts that comfort children with life-threatening illnesses and children of abuse.

I am really excited about doing this project. I am not sure I will complete it before the end of May due to my trip to NYC at the end of the month for the BEA. BUT, I will definitely get it done by mid-June and will share it with you before I send it off to Quilts for Kids.

This month’s theme for The Social Justice Challenge is hunger. Amy invited us to post a photo which represents hunger to us. I always think of the children who are hungry when I think of hunger – the huge, bloated bellies, the vacant eyes, the delicate bones jutting just beneath their skin. The picture I’ve posted here says it all.

I have never experienced hunger – at least not this kind of hunger. I cannot imagine living day to day without food being readily available, and yet, that is the reality for many people around the world.

I am planning on participating in this month’s theme, but I don’t yet know what my action will be. I actually would like to do something locally because we have a large homeless population in my county and there are many people who are hungry every day.

I have already read a book which I think is a pretty good book for this month’s theme: Impatient with Desire, by Gabrielle Burton (read my review) which centers around the Donner Party’s ill-fated trek to California. If you don’t know the story, nearly half of them starved to death when they were stranded in the mountains. They ate shoe leather, the hides from animals…and when faced with nothing to eat at all, some turned to cannibalism. I don’t think any of us can imagine a hunger so great we would resort to eating our dead comrades. But that is exactly what happened with the Donner Party. I am giving away a signed copy of the book this month – to get your name in the drawing, visit this post before midnight (PST) on April 20th.

Are you participating in The Social Justice Challenge this month? If so, what are you considering as an action?

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945) -

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. – Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) -

So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world. – Isodore Duncan -

As part of this month’s theme for the Social Justice Challenge, I need to perform an action related to the theme. I have decided that my action will be to provide information here on my blog which will raise awareness of Child Abuse and Domestic Violence. It is articles like this one which make me realize that it is not just society at large who needs to see this problem for what it is, but judges and law enforcement may also need some education. To think that a judge would mandate children have overnight visitation with a father who is a danger to them (albeit with “conditions” such as the need for a lock on the girls’ bedroom door and another adult present somewhere in the home during the visit) is appalling. Cara from The Curvature discussed this case on her blog – and she makes my argument far more compellingly than I do.

The problem is widespread (just do a Google search on “child abuse” and you will find yourself overwhelmed with thousands of articles). The National Statistics on child abuse are mind-numbing.

Over 3 million reports of child abuse are made every year in the United States; however, those reports can include multiple children.  In 2007, approximately 5.8 million children were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations. – from Child Help.org -

The numbers are staggering:

• Almost five children die everyday as a result of child abuse.   More than three out of four are under the age of 4.
• It is estimated that between 60-85% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates.
• A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds.
• Ninety percent of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way; 68% are abused by family members.

The cost to society is huge:

• Thirty-one percent of women in prison in the United States were abused as children.
• Over 60% of people in drug rehabilitation centers report being abused or neglected as a child.
• About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children.
• About 80% of 21 year old that were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.
• Abused children are 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy
• Children who experience child abuse & neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.
• Children who have been sexually abused are 2.5 times more likely develop alcohol abuse
• Children who have been sexually abused are 3.8 times more likely develop drug addiction

It is easy to become overwhelmed with the statistics and to think there is nothing we can do to change them. But, I am encouraged by the number of websites and organizations devoted not just to stopping the cycle of child abuse, but to ending domestic violence on all levels.

Here is what YOU can do:

LEARN to recognize the signs of abuse or neglect. This page on HelpGuide.org is a terrific resource to educate yourself.

REPORT suspected abuse. You do not need to be certain abuse is happening, you only need to suspect it. Your suspicions will be investigated by people trained in identifying abuse. Reporting is anonymous.

EDUCATE those around you. April is Child Abuse Prevention month. You can take action – here is a calendar with an action per day during the month of April.

ADD YOUR NAME to the U.S. Postage Stamp Initiative (to increase awareness of the Children’s Memorial Flag, CWLA and Alameda County are submitting a proposal for the Children’s Memorial Flag to be commemorated on a US postal stamp). **I added my name to this initiative as another part of my action for this month’s Social Justice theme.

I will leave you with a touching video about child abuse…we CAN do something:

This month’s theme for The Social Justice Challenge is Child Abuse and Domestic Violence.

Natasha is asking a few questions to get us started:

• What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of domestic violence and child abuse?
• What does domestic violence and child abuse mean to you personally?
• What is your current knowledge of domestic violence and child abuse?
• Are you aware of the resources available for men, women and children who find themselves in domestic violence and child abuse situations?
• Have you chosen a book or resource to read for this month?
• Take some time and think about what potential action steps you could take.  (I’ll have a post dedicated to this shortly).

Before I became a Physical Therapist, I worked with children in a residential treatment center. I worked with girls, under the age of 13, who were so emotionally and behaviorally disturbed they had to live in an institutional setting. Many were on strong, psychotropic medications. All of them had one thing in common – they were victims of severe child abuse, primarily sexual abuse, which had begun (for most of them) before they were school age. These were kids that at very young ages had been raped, molested, beaten, choked, starved, and neglected.

It was heartbreaking.

I lived that job.

I could not put it to rest.

I still, more than 20 years later, have photos of the kids I worked with tucked into my bedside table. I wonder where they are today – how many are in mental hospitals? Dead? In prison? Living on the streets? How many were able to overcome their severe abuse to go on and live a normal life? I will never know. And it haunts me. Child abuse is one of the worst crimes. It targets our most vulnerable and innocent members of society.

So, the theme of child abuse is one which is important to me. I intend to participate fully in this month’s theme.

Unfortunately I know a lot about child abuse from my work with abused kids. I also am a mandated reporter as I am a health care professional…and I’ve had to make several reports to Child Protective Services over the years when I have encountered situations in my work which require me to take action. There are times I do not want to learn more about this subject – but without knowledge, how can we protect children? How can we make our communities safer?

Books I am considering reading:

I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, edited by Ellen Bass and Louise Thornton who write in their preface…’Our primary hope for this anthology is that the sexually abused child will come to understand that she can tell. In this telling, she can reclaim her innocence. She is innocent. She has always been innocent. Botht he burden of the crime and the crime itself are lifted from her shoulders. She can tell.‘

Ellen Foster, by Kate Gibbons – a novel whose 11 year old protagonist is a victim of abuse and neglect.

Say You’re One of Them, by Uwem Akpan – a short story collection. The flap on the book reads: ‘Every story is a testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing situations our planet can offer.‘ The stories include themes of child sex slavery and abuse.

Action Step:

There are multiple organizations which address the issues of child abuse and domestic violence. I have yet to decide what my action step will be, but I am looking closely at the following:

Raising public awareness through the organization Darkness to Light whose mission is to raise awareness of the prevalence and consequences of child sexual abuse by educating adults about the steps they can take to prevent, recognize and react responsibly to the reality of child sexual abuse.‘

Exploring possibilities through the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) which ‘serves as the nation’s principle information and resource center regarding all aspects of sexual violence. It provides national leadership, consultation and technical assistance by generating and facilitating the development and flow of information on sexual violence intervention and prevention strategies. The NSVRC works to address the causes and impact of sexual violence through collaboration, prevention efforts and the distribution of resources.‘

I hope you’ll visit The Social Justice Challenge blog and check out links to other participant posts on this subject.