Communities for Safe Kids
Communities for Safe Kids provides educational workshops on violence prevention to elementary school students (grades Pre-K to 5), school staff, and student caregivers in the Portland area.
Research shows that effective violence prevention involves a child’s entire community.
Communities for Safe Kids’ mission is to leverage the power of individuals, families, and communities to value and advance the well-being and safety of children. Through developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed education around personal safety, we provide communities with support, knowledge, and tools to help children grow in a safe, respectful, and healthy environment.
Student, Staff, and Caregiver Workshops
Communities for Safe Kids offers a series of violence prevention workshops for students, caregivers, and school staff. We work to prevent the most common types of violence children are going through by:
- Helping students have better relationships with each other through mindfulness, appreciation of diversity, and an understanding of bullying, bystander, and friendship behaviors;
- Helping adults inside and outside of school create a warm, caring environment, where students feel like they’re heard and can seek help when needed;
Promoting healthy societal norms to prevent many types of violence children experience, such as child abuse and domestic violence, and to promote supportive and help-seeking behaviors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should I care about having primary prevention programming in my classroom?
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A child will learn and retain new information more effectively when the adults in their lives have helped them address past and current complex trauma. - Prevention programs can actually alleviate past trauma and prevent future violence within the school environment.
- 60% of children will be exposed to violence in their daily lives. Adverse Childhood Experiences such as experiencing child abuse or witnessing domestic violence have been shown to have long-lasting physical and mental effects on children into adulthood. This is a public health issue.
Does this help me meet any Oregon Department of Education requirements?
Communities for Safe Kids workshops address many of the Oregon Department of Education Standards & Benchmarks for Health for grades K-5, including:
- Promotion of Mental, Social & Emotional Health
- Promotion of Sexual Health
- Violence & Suicide Prevention
Communities for Safe Kids also helps address many key concepts of:
- Oregon Department of Education’s Erin’s Law (Senate Bill 856 requiring all OR schools
K-12 to adopt a child sexual abuse prevention instructional program) - OR Bullying Statute (Senate Bill 1555 requiring all OR schools K-12 to develop and adopt policy regarding prohibition of harassment, intimidation or bullying, and cyberbullying)
How will Communities for Safe Kids help my students?
After participating in our student workshop series, students reported:
- 87% of students can identify at least one safe adult they can talk to if they have a problem
- 85% of students can identify at least one feeling in their body that indicated they needed help
- 83% of students know at least one way to safely help a peer experiencing bullying