CHILD FIND

 Approximately 750,00 children are reported missing each year according to the U.S. Department of Justice.*  Each child is precious and teaching them safety without terrorizing them is a hard thing to do - but it MUST be done.  This is an important area for the church, parents, and the community.  Take the opportunity to pull together and teach our children about strangers, abductions, and how to stay safe.  

 The Child Protection Education of America is dedicated to addressing the concern of missing and exploited children.  The CPEA is a national public charity, chartered as a non-profit cooperation, exempt from state and federal taxes and is supported by public contributions.  They have wonderful learning tools that can be used as early as the toddler years that will not frighten your child.  

 CPEA sells safety VHS tapes to tell your child, in a non-frightening way, about stranger danger and more.  These aren't the tapes you saw in grade school.  Kids either laughed at them or went home with nightmares.  There seemed to be no middle ground for safety videos - until now.  The CPEA uses real kids, in real places (a lot I recognized from Lindenhurst, NY), and uses a repetitive theme to drive the concept into your child's memory.  They have multiple volumes dealing with various subjects (strangers, summer safety, hot and cold, stop drop and roll...).  

This makes for an easy presentation for the church and community kids.  Pop in a video, follow up with questions and that is it!  It is that easy.  And the best part is these videos look like big kid music videos.  They show you and tell you what strangers are.  They show "nice" looking strangers and the typical vagrant strangers that lurk in doorways that have been burned into our minds. 

For more info on this organization go to www.find-missing-children.org or call 1-866-USA-CHILD.   

* Statistic is reported from the CPEA.