What is the TRUTH?
Our organization is going to focus on our patent-pending TRUTH model to connect to children. TRUTH is an acronym for:
*
TELL. We want children to feel like they're safe to tell an adult if they're being abused. We're setting out to build an state full of adult allies for children, so they know they can speak out.
*
RESPOND. Our adult allies will pledge to respond with love, compassion, and discretion
*
UNDERSTAND. Our adult allies will understand the importance of standing up for children in abusive situations, and that there is no cookie-cutter approach. We also want to help children understand that abuse is not their fault, and to understand there
is a world out there for them. We do that through the following two letters of our acronym.
*
TREAT. We firmly believe in treatment for victims of abuse, as well as abusers. We want to empower them to receive the counseling they need, and if there's a financial situation that prevents it from happening, to try to offset those costs.
*
HEAL. No one heals fully from abuse, but we can put children on the path to a bright future through our counseling assistance and the scholarship programs we're planning.
Here's our plan:
We've talked to oodles of experts in the child social work field, as well as teachers, principals, psychologists, etc. They spoke to us about what the challenges are they face, as
well as the things that could help the situation. With their input, our first four main initiatives presented themselves to us.
*
Phase 1: We want children in abusive environments to receive some very important and powerful messages: 1) There are adults out there who will support you. 2) You are loved. In this phase of our very ambitious project, we will distribute You Are Loved
teddy bears across to the state to the people who work one-on-one with kids in crisis situations. In the meantime, we'll also work on a call to action for Nebraska adults to sign our pledge to stand up against child abuse, neglect, exploitation, etc. The publicity
and goodwill we build from this step should help fund our next initiatives.
*
Phase 2: We're going to call on the experts in child psychology and design, here within our state, to help us design a comprehensive, interactive curriculum for children in preschool through elementary school. Then we will distribute that curriculum
statewide. All curriculum will be centered around our own unique TRUTH model.
*
Phase 3: While developing our curriculum, we'll be fundraising, fundraising, fundraising, to earn enough to begin a program that helps income-qualified families and individuals pay for the mental health care they need to overcome their crises of abuse.
*
Phase 4: If we're talking about building a brighter future for these children, we have to give them the education they need to prosper beyond their youth. We'll develop a scholarship program for victims of abuse so they can go to college and work toward
a bright tomorrow. And since we plan to put children into counseling, we need to have enough counselors on hand to help them. Another important facet of this phase is a scholarship or tuition reimbursement program for Nebraska high school seniors who promise
to attend a Nebraska college and then work within our state in the field of child psychology.
Where do you come in?
If I could afford to bankroll this organization on my own, trust me, I would. Here's how your money will go to work immediately. Depending on how much we earn during this campaign
here, that will determine the number of teddy bears we purchase. The price drops from $8.38 to $5.94 per bear if we can order more than 1000 quantity.
* Anything you donate at this point will go toward incorporating our non-profit and funding the purchase of the bears. As we distribute the bears and use social media and statewide
local media, awareness of our organization will rise and help us begin to fund the next phase as we roll out event fundraisers across the state.
* If we can blow our goal away, we'll have enough in our coffers to begin to fund clerical aspects of fundraising and curriculum development, including printing costs of entry forms
and envelopes, as well as the printing costs and delivery of curriculum.
www.facebook.com/nebraskatruth
Follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/truthnebraska
Or visit our website at www.nebraskatruth.org
