Incorporated in July of 1998 and serving its first child in May of 1999, The Guardian Center has now been serving the community and region at large for 26 years. Executive Director Sheryl Woodham has been there for all of it. She visited with Carmi Kiwanis Thursday with an update on the center’s activity, stats, and upcoming opportunities for club members and the public at large to get involved. The Children’s Advocacy Center started with 3 counties and is now up to 8. In the fiscal year that just ended June 30th, Woodham says the organization worked 289 allegations in total, 244 of those were centered around sexual abuse. Even after 26 years, while progress has been made, Woodham says the goal remains the same and there’s still work to be done.
We’re just committed to the protection and healing of abused children and their families. Abuse is still a major problem in our communities. I haven’t worked myself out of a job in 26 years; I had hoped to do that. There’s still much that needs to be done. We all recognize that child abuse is a problem here and we also want to make certain that the community itself is part of the solution, not just the problem. No one agency can solve this problem and I know that.
Some of the stats from the last year include 170 girls have been served versus 90 boys and 90% of those children knew their abuser. By county, White saw the most cases with 55, followed by Crawford with 41, Richland with 36, Wabash with 34, Lawrence with 42, 25 each in Gallatin and Saline, 10 in Edwards County and an additional 25 attributed elsewhere. Woodham says the numbers tell her there’s more work to do in some areas where there needs to be more education.
That’s a significant number for this [White] county. Most of the time, I’m expecting 35-40 cases in a year; the fact that we had 55 kids from White County I think is important. Some of our other counties should have that many cases but didn’t including Saline where the population is greater than White County. I would anticipate 60-80 kids interviewed in a year and we didn’t have that. We had 25 kids interviewed last year. I think that’s an indication of the awareness in the community not being as high as it needs to be in Saline County. We’ve got to create some more awareness there.
Two opportunities to help The Guardian Center are nearing including the annual Candy Corn 5K on Corn Day, Saturday, October 11th. That event starts at finishes at the First Christian Church with registration from 7-8am and the race starting at 8:15am. Find more information at Candy Corn 5K.
The other event, The Guardian Center Gala of Hope is coming up Friday, September 12th and will be held at the 404 Seed Station on 5th Street in Carmi. Woodham says it’s a fresh new take on the gala.
This is the first time we’ve been involved with a mystery dinner and I’m kind of excited about it. We have Upstage Productions coming over to do it for us at the 404 Seed Station on September 12th. It’s going to be a fun night. I hope we have a good crowd coming in for that. We’re selling tables if you want to fill a table. If you want to just buy a ticket or two, you can do that.
Learn more at Events 1 — The Guardian Center, Inc.
The center also just recently wrapped up an auction fundraiser bringing in just over $2,000.
Learn more about The Guardian Center and the work the organization does at https://www.theguardiancenter.org/.