Make Lane County a Safe, Healthy Place for All Kids and Families

24,000 Lane County children – 1 in 3 – have experienced abuse or neglect in their lives. It’s 90by30’s mission to change that.

The 90by30 Initiative is an innovative and comprehensive plan to face and reduce child abuse and neglect. It grew from a single aspirational goal: a 90% reduction of child abuse and neglect in Lane County by 2030. Our goal is to make Lane County a safe, healthy, and nurturing place for families and children by engaging our neighbors, focusing on primary prevention that stops child abuse before it starts, and finding a role for everyone in supporting parents. With your support, we’re changing the way people in Lane County think about preventing child abuse. It’s not someone else’s problem – it’s ours.

At the heart of 90by30 is the belief that child abuse is preventable – and that it’s prevented when kids are connected, families are supported, and community members take positive action. April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, but it’s about more than awareness; it’s about taking those positive actions. You’ll be doing just that when you contribute to 90by30 programs that welcome new babies into the community, teach children empathy, and provide parents with peer support networks. 

When you donate toward our $15,000 goal, you’re providing a crucial piece of funding to help us serve 895 local families in 2022 and inspire local community members to find their role in supporting kids and families. You’re also investing in a unique effort to tackle child abuse at its roots.

What does serving 895 families in 2022 look like?

• 100 Welcome Baby Bundles delivered to new parents
• 120 caregivers welcomed into the safe, non-judgmental space of a Parent Café
• 675 families’ hearts touched by the “tiny teachers” of Roots of Empathy
  
  

Through the month of April, a gift to this campaign will help us amplify youth voices on the subject of prevention, bring the Roots of Empathy program to more Lane County classrooms, and deliver Welcome Baby Bundles to new parents in rural areas. 

Your gift will help fund evidence-based programs like:

The Welcome Baby Bundle
This gift to families with new babies provides not just physical essentials like diapers and onesies but also a connection to the community. The Bundle is delivered during a one-time home visit that connects the parents with a community volunteer, helping to break social isolation when parents can be most vulnerable. A curated resource binder helps normalize help-seeking, and information on safe sleep and Shaken Baby Syndrome keeps infants safe. 

Roots of Empathy
Through a year of classroom visits from a baby and caregiver, elementary-school children learn to navigate relationships, form connections, and be inclusive of others. This award-winning program, currently being implemented in a dozen countries, has been shown to decrease acts of aggression and bullying while increasing prosocial behavior. The parents of tomorrow are in the classrooms of today, and Roots of Empathy lays the foundations for a more caring, civil society.

Parent Cafés
Peer support groups give parents a safe space to share the joys and challenges of raising children. Structured conversations on topics like self-care, co-parenting and the intersection of parenting and social justice nurture parents along their journey and develop leaders from within the parenting community. During the pandemic, we’ve successfully pivoted to virtual Café events.

Prevention Education and Research
By sharing our research into the effectiveness of prevention strategies, 90by30 and the Center for the Prevention of Abuse and Neglect build momentum and inspire action. Prevention works, and it’s worth investing in. That’s made clear by projects like the evaluation of Protect Our Children, a child sexual abuse prevention curriculum, and a retrospective report on the ways the Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force has confronted violence over its 20-year history. We’re now working to bring youth voices to the forefront with the statewide Oregon Child Abuse Prevalence Study, which directly surveys high schoolers about their experiences to more accurately determine abuse rates and learn from teens’ and pre-teens’ own perspectives.