>Every Child Deserves a Happy Childhood

April is Child AbusePrevention Month.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are mistreated through abuse or neglect. Often, emotional abuse is the hardest type of abuse to detect or control. In the state of North Carolina, in the year 2009, 373 children lost their lives to child abuse.

This April, the GAL (Guardian Ad Litem, District 3B) program is going to raise awareness about this issue with a powerful visual aid. They plan to have a traveling demonstration of children’s shoes on display that represent every child that lost their lives due to abuse or neglect.

“They’ve asked for blue shoes only since that’s the color that represents Child Abuse Awareness Month. The idea is to use the demonstration to show how many children have been killed as a result of child abuse in North Carolina. It’s expected to make a bigger impact when the shoes are worn out and it’ll show just how many shoes could have been filled by children had they not lost their lives at the hand of an abuser.” – Judy Avery, Vice President of Marketing and General Manager of Freedom Eastern North Carolina.

We need your help! We need 350 pairs of used children’s shoes, all different sizes from infant to 16 years old. PLEASE, NO NEW SHOES.

Please donate old, worn and used shoes from your home, yard sales or thrift stores. The worn out, the better. And BLUE. We would like BLUE shoes, since Blue represents Child Abuse Prevention Month.

We will be collecting BLUE shoes until the end of March. Please do your part and help stop child abuse.

The New Bern Sun Journal will be the ONLY drop off site at 3200 Wellons Blvd, New Bern, NC 28562, Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm.

Submitted by: Judy Avery, Vice-President of Marketing and General Manager of Freedom ENC – New Bern Sun Journal