Creating the Future from the Future

My first project is to sign up 50 people onto ChildStar before 12/31/2009. This has already stimulated some interesting conversations. For instance, my mother, understandably, could not imagine the end of child abuse and neglect. I told her about how allowing my self to hold that possibility opened the window to ideas and actions that I had never considered before - including ChildStar! itself. Byron Manering and I had the same seed idea on the same night immediately after learning that we could "create the future from the future" instead of limiting ourselves to past experience and collective shared assumptions about what is or isn't possible. Byron took the ChildStar! ball and ran with it; he is primarily responsible for its creation and on-going development.

I also told my mother about the research results of Triple P America, a population-based intervention with multiple levels of parenting education, training and support. Their research involved dividing S. Carolina into 2 groups of 18 Counties. Their outcomes after a two year study showed statistically significant reductions of reported child maltreatment, child abuse and neglect injuries, and out of home placements in the counties receiving Triple P interventions.

Over the past couple of decades there has been a sea change in our collective attitudes toward smoking, the environment, etc. Child abuse and neglect is a barometer of the health of our country and world, and in order to end it every other life domain must also be addressed. Looking through the lens our our children's health and well-being is a key to the creation of healthy communities. Kat

Byron Manering

Thank you Narrissa Ngiruos from bizFutures for designing this blog site and to Bryan Hughes from Brigid Collins Family Support Center for linking it with the ChildStar! web site. I look forward to reading about other the ChildStar!Projects around the community, state and world that are demonstrating that communities that care about children and are free of child abuse is an idea whose time has come!