"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"

And if you look for the helpers, as Mr. Rogers’ mother suggested above, you'll find them — often struggling to fund their programs.

Helpers are everywhere in our communities doing critically important work and sometimes they do their work quietly and unnoticed to the public at large. "We don't want to give potential child abusers ideas," said Rebecca LeBeau, executive director of Northern Nevada's Child Assault Prevention (CAP) Program.

CAP was founded in 1984 as a nonprofit organization whose mission is to conduct child abuse prevention workshops in Northern Nevada schools. LeBeau has been CAP's executive director since 2000.

Nevada law (NRS 389.031) requires the Department of Education, "in consultation with persons and organizations who possess knowledge and expertise in the teaching of personal safety of children," to develop "[a]ge-appropriate curriculum standards based on best practices for teaching the personal safety of children to pupils in kindergarten and grades 1 to 12, inclusive." And NRS 389.064 requires "The board of trustees of each school district and the governing body of each charter school shall ensure that instruction in the personal safety of children . . . be implemented as part of a course of study in health . . ."

The SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented impingement on the lives of children, their families, and both private and public educational systems. A wide range of stressors have resulted in a loss of social control, such as: School closings and quarantines, distance learning, parental job insecurity, family member anxiety, depression and substance abuse, family members and caregivers falling ill with COVID, as well as racial and political unrest.

According to numerous reports, domestic violence calls to law enforcement agencies have increased as much as 10 percent at times over the past 18 months.

"CAP’s interactive workshops engage students in discussions, role-playing, demonstrations and they address bullying, stranger dangers at home and on the street, sex trafficking as well as internet and social media predators," said LeBeau. "Children are also taught how to recognize and ward off unsafe and secret touches."

Last year⁠⁠, despite the numerous disruptions caused by the pandemic and school closings, requiring CAP to build a "live-learning" internet steaming studio to provide its workshops for distance learning programs, LeBeau said, "CAP presented 425 workshops and taught 6,984 rural and urban students how to keep themselves safe from child abuse and assault. As a result of those workshops, we empowered over 460 children to get help for their individual circumstances."

According to the 2020 annual report of the National Children's Alliance, there are 924 children advocacy centers in the U.S. that empowered 338,475 children to get help for their individual circumstances. That is an average of 366 children helped per advocacy center. However, in Northern Nevada, CAP helped 460 children⁠—or 26 percent more children⁠—with its programs during the pandemic than the national average!

In a normal school year, CAP conducts "nearly 600 workshops, teaching approximately 14,000 children how to keep themselves safe from assault and abuse. Since its inception, CAP has presented abuse prevention workshops to over 360,000 children and adults in Northern Nevada, according to the most recent CAP annual report.

Funding for CAP traditionally comes from a variety of sources such as charitable foundations that promote child safety as well as the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. Due to new and compounded disruptions caused by the pandemic⁠—competition for scarce funds for critical social programs is now fierce.

Consequently⁠⁠—and alarmingly⁠⁠—CAP is presently faced with a last-ditch effort to keep its valuable life-saving workshops alive by raising desperately needed funds through public outreach.

The loss of CAP's free workshops in Northern Nevada schools will shift the job of compliance with Nevada law to "ensure that instruction in the personal safety of children . . . be implemented" onto already disastrously overextended school counselors. That will result in greatly diminished child assault prevention workshops and post-workshop services to attend to children's individual cases as well as follow up reports to monitor what the children have retained from their abridged training.

Maybe you are a parent who remembers a CAP workshop while you were in school?

CAP has been a Mister Rogers style "helper" keeping kids "Safe, Strong, and Free" in Northern Nevada for 37 years — but sometimes even the helpers need help.

Will you be a helper?

Bob Tregilus (@BobTregilus) is a retired civil rights and energy policy community organizer and journalist living in Reno. He currently practices fine art photography and is a part-time fine art framer at Nevada Fine Arts. He is also an occasional photojournalism contributor to the Sierra Nevada Ally.