“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” ~Desmond Tutu
We often share this quote at Darkness to Light Authorized Facilitator trainings because why primary prevention is so critical. Primary prevention is all about preventing harm or injury before it can even occur. There is so much power in primary prevention, but Stewards of Children® also teaches adults secondary prevention skills in how to react and respond to child sexual abuse.
Each year finds us one step further in creating more prevention-oriented communities, or in other words, communities who are focused on protecting all children using simple skills in primary and secondary prevention. Look back with us on the impact Darkness to Light has had this year and how we moved toward our goal through prevention strategies.
More than 55,800 adults made the courageous choice to take Stewards of Children® and learn how to prevent child sexual abuse this year. These brave people bring our community of Stewards up to 2.44 million people around the world who have taken Stewards of Children® since its original release in 2005.
We trained over 570 Authorized Facilitators in over 35 workshops during 2024. This means that 2025 will see 570 more people around the country going out into their communities and training adults in Stewards of Children®. Nearly 200 of these Facilitators were trained by 10 Certified Instructors during an in-person event in Franklin, Tennessee! This was the first event of its kind for us. The Child Care Resource and Referral Network in Tennessee brought us together to carry out this incredible effort. It is the beginning of an important movement in Tennessee to protect children.
To support the work that our Facilitators do, we successfully migrated to a new Dashboard experience to make creating trainings, collecting survey data, and distributing certificates easier for them while giving us a more accurate assessment of the impact of Stewards of Children and all our training offerings.
We worked alongside The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Kappa Delta Sorority at the College of Charleston, the National Exchange Club and several Charleston area chapters, the American Kennel Club, National Children’s Advocacy Center, TCG New York City Marathon, and the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse.
We continued to offer original programming for our Honest Conversations and Honoring Their Voices series and finished filming content for the Spanish version of Stewards of Children (which will be released in 2025).
Will you join us in 2025, our 25th anniversary year?
Our children are better protected when we all are a part of keeping the places where they live, play and learn safe. There are many ways you can join our efforts:
- You can donate funds to directly support our programming
- We can partner together in innovative ways to advance solutions to child sexual abuse prevention
- You can become an Authorized Facilitator or simply take Stewards of Children® to learn about the 5 Steps to Protecting Children.
Collectively, we can – and will – make a difference. This year has shown it!
