April is Child Abuse Prevention Month in the United States. Dove's Nest encourages faith communities to take time during April to consider the plight of abused children and find practical methods to end child abuse and neglect in the communities where they live, work, and worship.
Anna Groff's Q&A with Katie Misz, family life minister, and Ron Weirich, lay minister for family life ministry, at Waterford Mennonite Church, Goshen, Indiana.
By Anna Groff
Last month, I took my two daughters to McDonald’s to play in the play area and get some ice cream. We needed to get out of the house, and it was too dark for the park. While I was in the parking lot getting them out of their car seats, a security guard alerted us that we might want to use the drive-through, as there was a man inside “tweaking out” on meth. I thanked him and said we’d head to another McDonald’s up the road.
Ten-year-old Kylie has been thriving—protected and safe—in her church family ever since her earliest days in the church nursery thanks, in part, to you. Your generous support for Dove’s Nest during our first decade provided training on the very best ways to keep kids safe to Kylie's Sunday school teachers and her whole church. You gave that gift of safety to Kylie’s church and to children in faith communities across North America.
By Katherine B. Wiens, MEd, LPC
Wherever you are on the journey is exactly where you need to be.
This is my new mantra about sexual violence and survivors.
This material about physical boundaries for adults working with children comes from Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church’s 2009 “Safe Church Policies and Guidelines For Children in Childcare.”
Respect, safety, and appropriate boundaries are the guiding principles for physical contact between childcare workers and children. The guidelines below are intended to avoid contact that is or may appear threatening or inappropriate.
By Carol Knieriem, Dove’s Nest Board Member and Volunteer
Forty-year-old George has a hard time walking in the doors of a church—the result of being molested by his youth pastor at age fifteen. After a year of being molested, church officials were informed about the abuse. George’s perpetrator was told to leave the church, and George was instructed not to tell anyone about the abuse.
Dove’s Nest is celebrating a significant increase in the number of churches reporting they have a written child protection policy. This finding appeared in a survey conducted by Dove’s Nest board and staff this spring, began as the organization is approaching its ten-year anniversary in 2019.
There was beauty in the room as women and girls from 12 different states entered a sacred space July 26-27 in Omaha, Nebraska, to explore and claim healthy personal boundaries. I breathed a prayer of thanks that I could attend “Empowering Women: Claiming Healthy Personal Boundaries,”a collaboration of Mennonite Women USA and Dove’s Nest.
By Anna Groff
Addressing an audience of girls as young as fourteen and women as seasoned as seventy-six is not an easy feat, but our keynote speaker Jenny Castro of the Women in Leadership Project of Mennonite Women USA did an exceptional job.