April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month and advocates for child well-being are letting people know that everyone has a role to play when it comes to stopping abuse. Advocates have launched a "Thumbs Up 4 Prevention" campaign to promote healthy child development.
People are encouraged to paint their thumbnails blue and post pictures to social media to start a conversation about prevention.
"We're all in this together and we all need to know what to look out for, we all need to know how we can help in this prevention effort," says Brenda Stanley, a board member with the Idaho Children's Trust Fund. "And so we're hoping that by having people paint that one thumbnail blue - especially with a lot of people that don't normally wear nail polish - that people will ask, 'What's that?'"
Stanley says people with painted thumbnails can point folks to organizations' websites that offer resources on this subject, such as the Idaho Children's Trust Fund and Prevent Child Abuse America. Stanley points to training programs such asDarkness to Light that is available to help adults protect children from abuse."We want to help," she states. "We want to keep families strong, and this is how we do it - by giving them resources. And by going to these trainings, it gives everybody that resource to know what to look for."
Stanley says it's up to adults - not children - to ensure that every child has a happy and healthy childhood.
She encourages people to use #ThumbsUpIdaho to promote abuse prevention awareness online.