On May 28^th MMCF’s Executive Director, Walt Wheeler awarded a Masonry’s B.E.S.T. grant to the Child Advocacy Center (CAC) of Ottawa County.  Their mission? To protect children by providing prevention and multidisciplinary intervention in the investigation, assessment, and treatment of child sexual abuse in an environment that is child sensitive, supportive and safe.

The CAC will use this grant to provide body safety training to children in K-4^th grades. Students will be taught how to differentiate between safe and unsafe touches, their right to protect their bodies, and how to get help if they receive an unsafe touch. It is the hope of the CAC to increase their training from 3,900 students per year to 19,000.

Ottawa County has 68,000 children under the age of 18 and statistics show that 6,800 (1 in 10) of those children will be victims of sexual abuse before their 18^th birthday.  CAC believes that prevention education is necessary to decrease the prevalence and destruction of child sexual abuse by preventing the abuse from occurring in the first place.

Your generosity is making an impact and we are grateful for the ongoing support we receive to help fund life changing programs like this one.