Charity event to support Childhelp in Phoenix
400 kids come to Childhelp’s advocacy center in Phoenix to look for help every month, and the organization is hoping to help more children. FOX 10’s Ashlie Rodriguez has more on what they are doing to raise money.
PHOENIX – 400 kids a month come into Childhelp’s advocacy center in Phoenix to look for help after reports of abuse in their home, and the center says they are hoping to help more children.
“We’re talking about children who are starved, children who are beaten, children that are emotionally distressed,” said Childhelp Chief Operating Officer (COO) Michael Medoro. “We just had some situations here in Arizona. We had a story with Rebecca Baptiste, where more than a dozen phone calls were made to [Department of Child Safety] from her school, letting them know ‘hey, this child is in danger,’ but little action was taken to investigate that nature.”
The backstory:
Childhelp is completely funded through donations. They help about 400,000 kids across the nation every year, and 7,000 of those kids are in Arizona.
Many times, Childhelp steps in where DCS and other, similar agencies can’t. The national organization has a hotline where kids or anyone with concerns can report abuse, and in Downtown Phoenix, their advocacy center serves as a safe place, with Phoenix Children’s Hospital staff, Phoenix Police Department’s Crimes Against Children officers, and Maricopa County prosecutors can work directly with adolescent victims.
“We all have the same goal,” said Kenneth McKinley, who is the director of Childhelp’s Children’s Advocacy Center in Phoenix. “We want to see justice happen, and we want to start the healing process. And so, a child advocacy center, the focus isn’t just on the case. Really, the focus is on the child”
Dig deeper:
Bringing justice and healing to abused children is the goal of the annual Sport Truck RV Charity Track Day, which aims to raise $100,000 this year.
The day is all about pairing the thrill of racing with a cause that really matters. Childhelp, as mentioned above, works to protect and heal abused and neglected kids, and the racers want to show how adrenaline and advocacy can come together to make an impact on the community.
“It doesn’t really feel like you’re going that fast because in the race car, there’s not really a speedometer.,” said Radford Racing School driver Kai Goddard.
In October, Goddard and dozens of other racers are going to speed around RadfordRracingSschool’s track to raise money for Childhelp.
About 60 racers will fill the track next month, launching, accelerating and drifting to help kids who are trying to escape physical and sexual abuse.
“When we first met Childhelp, we got to understand their mission and what they were doing. It was impactful and emotional, and pretty tear jerking to me. So we wanted to do anything and everything we could,” said Goddard.
What you can do:
Childhelp Arizona
https://www.childhelp.org/national-and-local-impact-map/arizona/