Community DC Michael Medero Childhelp

Community DC Host Dennis Glasgow visits with the COO Michael Medoro from Child Help – a non-profit that provides support for victims of child abuse and neglect through its national hotline, residential facilities, and various programs. It offers 24/7 crisis intervention via phone, text, and online chat, provides therapeutic foster care, and runs educational programs like "Childhelp Speak Up Be Safe" to prevent abuse and bullying.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Good morning, and welcome to another edition of Community DC.
I'm your host Dennis Glasgow. This morning, we welcome Michael Madoro.
He is the COO for Childhelp, a nonprofit that provides
support for victims of child abuse and neglect through its
national hotline, residential facilities, and various programs. It offers twenty
four to seven crisis interventions via phone, text and online chat,

(00:28):
provides therapeutic foster care, and runs educational programs like child Help,
Speak Up, Be Safe to prevent child abuse and bullying.
This is a very important topic with many layers and
a great conversation with Michael. I hope you have some
positive takeaways from this very serious subject. Here's my conversation
with Michael. Now, Good morning, Michael, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
How are you.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
First off, Michael, let's tell everybody what child Help is
and does.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Absolutely, Dennis, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Child Help started actually back in nineteen fifty nine following
the Korean War. Actually, what it transpired was our founders,
Sarah O'Mara and Von Fetterson, who are still the acting President, CEO,
chair and vice chair of the board today. These women
are ninety years of age, but they work eighty plus.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Hours a week.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
I mean, these women are tireless in their commitment and
devotion to this mission. But what really happened is that
prior to the Vietnam War, they were both asked to
go participate on a USO tour entertaining troops. They were
entertaining troops in Japan when all of a sudden, they
encountered the worst typhoon that Tokyo had ever experienced.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
They were held up in their hotel.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Rooms and they got a little antsy and decided to
sneak on out. And when they snuck out, they came
across eleven children who were huddled together trying to stave
off the winds in the rain from the typhoon. And
these two women brought these children into their hotel room,
gave them food, gave them warmth, gave them some shelter,
and came to learn that these children were the results

(01:55):
of American soldiers having relationships with Japanese women, and neither
side the US or Japan wanted to claim these children,
and they were actually considered which is probably one of
the ugliest terms I've ever heard. They were considered to
throw away children, and so they were just kind of
cast out defend for themselves. And because a lot of
orphanages in that area at that time didn't receive any

(02:15):
form of financial stipend or subsidy to care for these children,
no home would bring these children in and care for them,
so they literally were left out in the streets to
care for themselves. And Sarah and yvon just found that unacceptable.
And so Sarah and yvon went and started working with
our US military and expressed to our US military, Hey,
these children are the result of your efforts and your

(02:37):
actions here. You need to take charge of this situation.
And in partnership with our US military, they ended up
constructing orphanages, hospitals, schools, not just in Japan, but also
in Vietnam. And then when the fall of Saigon came
and the US military was getting ready to pull out,
Sarah Yavaan said, well what.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
About the children?

Speaker 3 (02:57):
And the US military was just like, hey, we've done
what we can do, but we're pulling out, We're heading
back home. And so Sarah Yvonn orchestrated which something I
considered to be America's best kept secret, Operation Babylift. And
this is where Sarah and Yvonn worked with a number
of other partners and commercial airlines in the US military
and rescued more than thirty five hundred children who would

(03:19):
have lost their lives during the fall of Saigon, brought
them all the way to the United States, where they
had awaiting adoptive family for every single one of those children.
And as they got to the US, these were two
women who originally when they went overseas for the USO tour,
these were Hollywood starlets. They were both actresses on the
Ozzy and Harriet Show. They both had married Hollywood producers.

(03:40):
They really had Hollywood type aspirations, and so when they
came back to the States, it was, okay, we did
that with the USO. Now it's time to kind of
pick up our careers. And they were getting recognized for
what they had orchestrated with Operation Babylift, and then California
Governor Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy tapped Sarah and

(04:00):
Yvonne and said, hey, you two are the two that
we need to tackle America's best kept secret, that being
child abuse. And back then Sarah and yvon were like,
what's child abuse? Nobody was talking about child abuse? What
was happening behind closed doors? Stayed behind closed doors, and
it was actually the Reagans that invested twenty five thousand
dollars of their own money to conduct a feasibility study

(04:24):
for Sarah and Yvonne to understand what child abuse look
like in America and from their Child Help was launched,
and from there, over the last sixty seven years, Child
Help has directly impacted the lives of more than fourteen
million children.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
And we are currently arguably one of the nation's largest
and oldest nonprofit organizations working in this space.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
This whole story started with just an act of kindness
and then it turned into something incredibly large.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
You'll see above the doorway of every Child Help facility,
you will see the same words, and it's all who
enter here will find and love. And that is really
what Sarah and Yvonne embody. That is what they brought
into the organization and has carried us through these last
sixty seven years. And that's really how they have tackled.
The creation and the implementation of every programmatic service that

(05:15):
we offer has been from an opportunity to carry love
into a community or into an environment where there doesn't
appear to feel like there.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Is any Michael let's talk about mission and vision. What
are those for Child Help?

Speaker 3 (05:27):
So the mission of Child Help is to work towards
the eradication of abuse through prevention, intervention and treatment services, and.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
We do that through a comprehensive approach.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
So going back to our start again, the Reagans were
the one that invested in that first feasibility study. So
we began with government affairs. We began with trying to
take a look at legislation that exists or needs to
exist in this country to help keep children safe. And
still to this day, Child Help works. In fact, Sarah
and Yvonne were able to get the month of April

(05:57):
to be congressionally recognized as Child Abuse Prevention Month, and
the first Wednesday of every April has been recognized as
Child Helps Day of Hope. And that's an opportunity to
commemorate the number of not just survivors of abuse annually,
but also recognize it in this country today. Right now,
in this country, six children die every single day as

(06:19):
a direct result of abuse. And what Child Up is
working to do is to try to change that statistic
by bringing in earlier prevention efforts and earlier intervention efforts
into communities where we're seeing such a rise through government affairs.
Child helped launch what is operating today as the National
Child Abuse Hotline. The number for that is one eight

(06:40):
hundred and for a child. And when Sarah and Yvaughn
created this hotline more than forty five years ago, what
they created was a hotline that is operating twenty four
hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and
sixty five days a year by professionally master or doctoral
degree counselors. So these aren't volunteers, These aren't people who
have worked on some all center or hotline somewhere else.

(07:01):
These are actual counselors that are on this hotline that
are able to take any call from any individual in crisis.
Those calls are completely confidential, they're completely anonymous. We have
technology built into our system that allow these counselors to
understand the community resources that are available within the geography
of where that caller is coming from. And we also

(07:24):
have translation services a part of this hotline that allow
those counselors to serve up to two hundred and thirty
different languages, So we really have the ability to meet
anyone where they are at right now. Back in twenty nineteen,
in partnership with HHS, we were able to expand the
hotline to include text and chat capability, and that became

(07:46):
a major game changer for us, because up until that
point in time, about ninety percent of the interactions that
our counselors were having were with adults in crises, people
that were calling up and saying, I'm about to offend,
I'm about to abuse, I'm at my witch and I
can't take this anymore. Help me, stop me, prevent me
from doing some kind of harm. Once we included text

(08:07):
and chat capability, the pendulum swung the other way. Now
ninety percent of our interactions are with youth in crises
who are reaching out and expressing I don't feel safe,
I'm in a dangerous situation, I don't know what to do.
And that's really the value of what that hotline offers.
And that hotline is the hotline of record for the
Department of Health and Human Services for the United States

(08:28):
as well as the Department of Justice for the United States,
so we are the hotline of record for anything that
results around child abuse. We also operate Child Help, Speak Up,
Be Safe. In Child Help, Speak Up, Be Safe is
the only prevention education curriculum on the market today designed
to educate students from pre k through twelfth grade not

(08:49):
only on the signs and symptoms of abuse, but more importantly,
what to do when they witness or experience abuse. It's
built in an ecological way, so the maturity of the
curriculum and the nature of the curriculum continues to advance
as a child and as a student gets older. But
what is reinforced in this curriculum, which is taught twice
a year every academic year. The reinforcement to the availability

(09:12):
of a professional counselor through that hotline. So for Child Help,
the national approach is, we want to educate children at
the youngest age possible. We want to keep that education
going with them all the way throughout their high school years.
We want the curriculum that consists of educating the entire
community that surrounds that child, and we want that child
and we want that community to be aware of the

(09:33):
availability of a professional counselor twenty four to seven three
sixty five. That education at intervention is where Child Helps
sees the trajectory to breaking the cycle of abuse in
communities across America.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Michael how does everything work after the phone call starts, so.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
It really goes by a unique call, so every call
is unique. Then it's just like you said, when a
call comes in, we are not allowed to track.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Calls, so when the call can includes, we.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Are not allowed to follow back up with them directly,
but we do make our salves available to them if
they would like to follow back up with us. Oftentimes,
it's identifying the right community resource for the nature of
the call that comes into play. So if a caller
is calling you in and saying I'm in immediate danger, it's.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
That immediate connectivity to nine one one.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
It's that ability to facilitate emergency resources to them right
then and there, and sometimes it means staying on the
line with them until those emergency services become available. If
it's a I've got a question, I've observed something in
a classroom. So for example, I'm speaking to you right
now from Scottsdale, Arizona, and it's about one hundred and
ten degrees outside right now.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
If somebody, if we see a child walking into a.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
Walmart grocery store and he's got a beanie on his
head and long sleeves and long jeans and he's dressed
like he's going to be going into the winter cold
and he's.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
In this heat.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
That could be a sign and a symptom that they're
trying to cover up harm that's been done to that child.
So a lot of what we do is educate community
members wants signs and symptoms to look out for. And
so if a caller comes in and says, you know what, Hey,
I've got this child that's come on into the store.
He looks like he is malnourished, he has looked like

(11:16):
he is not dressed appropriately for the environment that we
are in, then we will help identify some community resources
here in Arizona. For example, that might be the Department
of Child Safety to come on down and interview that
child or take that child's account of what's happening, and
we'll be there to kind of help facilitate that record
keeping and moving on forward.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
We are not a reporting hotline.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
So if somebody is just like there has been a
very clear sign of abuse, or a child has come
in and is disclosed that they are in an abusive situation,
then we help facilitate the call between them and the
local law enforcement agencies for them to make a proper report.
We don't take that actual report. It varies by the

(12:01):
nature of the call that.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Comes on in.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
But for us, it's really the navigation of community resources
for individuals that are either experiencing abuse or feel there
at risk for abuse.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Michael, if you could tell us a little bit more
about these wonderful and credible counselors.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
These people are the lifeline and the are the vital
element that helps protect and prevent abuse from happening for
the children that are experiencing it. All of our counselors
are trained in trauma informed care and trauma informed language,
and that that's very important because oftentimes children and adults

(12:36):
that disclose don't always recognize the immediate trauma that they
are experienced, but then the visceral trauma that accompanies those
that are around that child, as well as the long
standing elements of trauma that carry beyond that report of abuse.
And so our counselors have that level of sensitivity and
that level of training to not only be able to
care for the immediate needs of that child, but also

(12:57):
to be able to care for the long term wellbeing
of that child. So that is one thing that I
would want to stipulate first and foremost. We also have
that support our counselors, we have victim advocates.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
So a lot of.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Times families and children need additional support when their case
has started and then when their case has closed. So,
for example, other programs that child offers is Child Help
pioneered the multidisciplinary model of advocacy centers, and so what
that means was when Sarah and Yvonn were taking a
look at in the earlier days, what happens to a

(13:30):
child when they are disclosing abuse. What they came to
discover was that a child would typically have to go
to about six or seven different entities to disclose their abuse,
and that would take anywhere between six seven eight months
to gather all of that information from talking to law enforcement,
medical personnel, legal personnel, therapists, counselors, attorney generals, etc. And

(13:53):
so every single time a child discloses what happened, they
are re traumatized from that abuse as well as the
longer and longer it takes for all of that, all
of those meetings that take place, more and more evidence
is lost. They would hold an offender accountable, and what
they discovered was.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
That at the end.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
When a situation arose to a point of a case
and somebody coming into an arrest, when it brought in
front of a courtroom, it typically was the child that
was on trial, not the offender, because when a child
has to tell their story to so many different people
over such varying periods of time, little details of the
story tend to change, and as those changes happened, prosecutors

(14:35):
would then hold those child, well, you said it here
this way, but then you didn't say that in this
situation when you spoke to that individual. Why the varying
did this really happen? This really didn't happen to you,
did it? You're making this up because and that would
be typical of what would happen in these cases. So
what Sarah y Bond created was the multidisciplinary model of
care in which all of those professionals work together under

(14:57):
one roof. So, for example, here at the AD because
he's centered in Phoenix, you have got child help working
under the same roof as Phoenix Children's Hospital, the largest
child crimes unit of Phoenix PDM, the Office of Child
Welfare and Investigations, the Department of Child Safety, the Attorney General,
everybody working together under one roof. The environment that the

(15:19):
child walks into is a child centric environment. It's not
an intimidating police station or a cold and sterile hospital room.
It's an environment that is multi colored with toys and decorations,
all things to make a child feel safe. When a
child is greeted the first time inside a playroom, which
they go into a playroom that is secured, nobody outside

(15:41):
of a credential person can get into that room. Once
they go in there, the first person that meets them
is a non uniformed forensically trained interviewer, somebody that is
going to get down on their level, make them feel comfortable,
and then gradually bring them into a room that we
call a forensic interview room.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
And when they go I went to that room. This
room is bland.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
There's no decorations or paraphernalia in that room of any kind,
so that there's nothing there to stimulate creativity or imagination
for a story. Inside that room is hit in audio
and video equipment, and that forensically trained interviewer gets an
opportunity to speak to that.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Child and allow that child to disclose what happened.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Adjacent to that room is a forensic monitoring room, and
that entire team that I just mentioned of professionals is
watching that interview in real time.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
That interview is being recorded.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
When that interviewer is done, he or she will go
into that monitoring room and ask that team of professionals
if there's anything that they would like to ask that
child or to have that child elaborate on. He or
she will go back into the interview room conclude the interview,
and when that interview concludes, that child never has to
tell their story again, they never have to be re
traumatized by their abuse. They immediately begin working with child

(16:54):
Help and our team of counselors and therapists immediately begin
working with them to provide them the healing journey that
they need to get on the other side of the
trauma that they experienced. That entire team of professionals now
takes that interview in real time and moves Dennis, I
can't tell you the number of times I have literally
seen police officers and investigators sprints out of the advocacy

(17:16):
center to go to the location where that child was
abused and be able to collect the evidence in the
exact spot that that child said that it would be
because of the timeliness of being able to get that
interview and get that team of professionals together. Historically, that
evidence likely would have been lost, never would have been captured,
because too much time had gone by and too many

(17:36):
things would have compromised that if that piece of evidence
ever got brought forward in the first place. So those
are the elements of what big our counselors, our therapists,
our victim advocates, our model of multidisciplinary care so exceptional
in addressing this space.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Well, I got to tell you, it's extraordinary, and I'm
glad you went into dealteal about that because it's so
well thought out and I know there's a lot of
different buckets that you're working with. Then I want to
ask you one more thing about the counselors when it
comes to people like me. Even though I've met people
in the fire department, the police force, nine to one
on operators in my job, and lots of other people
that are in crisis management, one of the things that

(18:13):
I take for Grant and Michael, maybe you did too
before you got into this gig and you're helping so
many people, is that when people hear a ton of
trauma or they see a lot of trauma. It has
a physical and a mental effect on them. And with
that said, I realized that they're trained and once again,
everybody's different out there, and we certainly get that in
their journey. But when it's dealing with the counselors and

(18:33):
all the other people that are working with all this
trauma and hearing some really horrific things every day, how
are they taking care of to make sure that they're
not only doing what you need them to do, but
also they're also taking care of as human beings as.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well well being.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
You're talking about vicarious trauma that our counselors experience, which
they experience on a daily basis, having to carry this on.
When I first started, I've been with Child Up for
thirteen years. When I first started, one of the very
first things that I did was sit on a hotline call,
and so I spent about maybe three three and a
half hours listening to some of the calls that came
on in and in that time, I think it took

(19:09):
me at least a good two to three.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Months before I could turn.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Off what I had heard. Just in those few hours
of listening to the call. Our counselors work full eight
hour shifts every single day of the week, so the
amount of I carrious trauma that they carry with them
is significant, and their well being.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Is very, very important to us.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
We invest a lot in mental health services and care
for our staff. We take into consideration what they need.
We have different sound baths, yoga, wellness initiatives that.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
We put in place.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
We try to schedule them in a manner that gives
them a significant amount of time off in between shifts
so they're not working back to back shifts so much
so that they can have some of that mental break.
But yes, it takes a very special person to be
able to care for this population, especially from the position
of a counselor or direct care staff. The experience in

(20:06):
the stories and the heartache that they have to listen
to and help these children navigate and support is incredible.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
And they are angels on earth. They are angels on Earth.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
They sure are. And I'm glad that you had a
chance to talk about them and those important people that
are part of the team. We are going to give
the website at the end. Then there's so much on
the website, folks, it's easy to navigate it. It is
nice to look at, but there's a lot of research
on there, information and you can really dig in there.
So Michael will give the website at the end if
you already have in Google that, we'll give the phone

(20:38):
number again as well. But I did want to go
over a few events, donations, and other programs coming up.
So why don't we do this because we did mention
off the top that you are here locally in the DMV,
but also you work domestically too. Can you explain how
that works?

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah, so we've got again we're in every single community
across America with the hotline and that prevention education curriculum
that I spoke with you about. But right here in
the DMV area, we operate the Child Up Alice Tyler Village,
which is right outside of Fredericksberg and in Virginia's in Lygnam, Virginia,
right outside of Fredericksburg. And this was a two hundred

(21:17):
and seventy acre former horse farm that we converted into
a licensed psychiatric residential care facility. Now, oftentimes when I
say psychiatric care facility, people think of white padded rooms
and straight jackets, and then no, I want you to
imagine two hundred and seventy acres of pine trees, open

(21:38):
land for children to recreate and explore, to go on
scavenger hunts, and to go trekking and hiking. We have
on this campus cottages that these children live in, and
these are home style environments where every child has their
own bed, their own footlocker, their own closet. There's a
kitchen and a living room, an area for them to

(21:59):
do their studies. They all have chores just like we
all had when we were kids growing on up. And
they receive every form of therapeutic care that you can
imagine on this campus, from traditional talk therapy, music therapy,
art therapy, equine animal therapy. We even have a chapel
on that campus for those that come from a faith

(22:20):
based community and would like to continue to practice their
faith there on the campus non public school, so that
they don't fall behind in their studies. The children that
live on this campus are children who have experienced the
worst forms of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that you
can imagine. These are the type of stories that you
hear the movies make and Lifetime Channel makes those television

(22:43):
series and dramas about These are the stories where children
are carved into and burned, severely mutilated. These are the
type of stories that happen that bring these children into
our care. Their stories are so graphic and so horrific
that these children have been removed from the care of
their homes and placed in our care to be able
to have one goal, and that goal is to get

(23:04):
them into a less intense facility or care. Sometimes that's
family reunification. Sometimes that's foster care or adoptive care, or
a group home or kinship care. It varies based upon
the nature of the trauma that that child has experienced.
But the average day for a child on that campus
is a little less than a year, typically about nine
to ten months of the year. Average age is between

(23:26):
six and sixteen years of age that they stay on there,
and our staff are twenty four to seven on that campus,
and you have got more Angels on Earth working there
our et Quine Animal Therapy programmed. As an example, there
was an amazing story once and now there's been a
few of these where you have had children who have

(23:47):
experienced such horrific abuse and trauma that they've been nonverbal.
But they come into our care and they have not spoken,
and they don't understand how to express themselves in any
mature way. And then with our animal therapy, we hear
words like I love you for the first.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Time because these children have an.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Opportunity to care for an animal and receive the care
back from that animal. I can't tell you the number
of times I've walked into our art therapy room and
you see the art projects that children start when they
first come into our campus, using a lot of blacks
and dark blues and purples, because the feelings that come
out from them are not light and not bright and

(24:28):
not vibrant. And then it changes, and then you can
see how their illustrations have gone from sad faces and
monsters to suns and rainbows and animals and smiles.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
I love when we get to see that. It's part
of our chapel.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
We have a choir and the children, if they want,
have an opportunity to learn how to sing and be
a part of the chapel, and children who have never
spoken a word standing front and center stage just bellowing
out at the top of.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Their lung songs.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Love is Some of the most beautiful towns you're ever
ever going to hear. These are some of the experiences
that happen right here in Virginia on that campus, and
it is phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
It is life changing.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Oftentimes, especially in our industry, when you hear words like
residential treatment facility, there are a number of for profit
companies around America that operate these type of facilities, and
they operate them in a for profit way. It's a
bed for a head. They're not providing that level of care,
that level of support that you will find at this facility,

(25:33):
which we affectionately call a village.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
So you won't find that at You'll find that.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Level of care and support at a child of village
that you won't find in some of these other facilities.
And a lot of times, especially people in the child
welfare space, try to make efforts to close those type
of operations and entities down. When we support that if
there's not care for a child, if it is truly
a bed for a head type of an operation, and
you're not providing them type of therapeutic care and sensitivity

(25:59):
and understanding that these children need, by all means, we
were standing right there in that child welfare spase and
we don't want to see those operations continue. But at
that child help village. That's not what you will see
in experience. You will see what I started our interview
with originally. All who went he here will find love.
You will see love on that campus. When I first
started a child up and I was taking a tour

(26:20):
of that village for the first time, there was a
young boy. His name was David, and he was about
seven eight years of age, and he stood out to
me on my tour because his suit was about three
sizes too big and he was wearing it. But he
was wearing this suit because all he heard was that
somebody important was coming on to campus, and all he

(26:41):
was hoping for was that somebody was going to see
him and want to adopt him. That was so he
dressed in the only thing that he had, which was
a suit, and he was excited. He was too big,
and he stood out for me, and he and I
had a wonderful conversation, and he did ask. He was
bold enough to sit there and say, would you adopt me?
And I was bolden to go back and say, I'm
not here to adopt you, but I am here to

(27:02):
help make sure that your journey moving forward is one
that is full of brightness and hope. And love, and
he did end up getting adopted by another family and
to my knowledge, you know, that has worked out very
well for him. But that is the type of care
that we exuberate on that campus.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
They have arts and crafts. The community plays a vital role.
We were talking a little bit about events.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
We do a number of events in the DMV area
to support that village.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Coming up.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
For example, in April, we will be having our large
gala which will be in the Tysons Corner area over
at the RITZ there. One hundred percent of the proceeds
that are raised from that gala go to support this
village operation and our hotline calls that serve all of
the DMV area, as well as support for our prevention
education resources in the DMV area.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
We've got at the latter part of October.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
On October twentieth, we've got to dine and drive a
golf event that are going to be doing out there.
I got to find out, I got to remember the
golf course on the top my head. I don't remember
if it stop.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
My head, but I'll get that to you at conclusion
of our interview.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
But we do a number of things we do the
biker community out in the DMV area always does a
ride to bring awareness and attention to our village and
then support our village out there. So it's a phenomenal community,
but it's a phenomenal operation. We typically have at any
given time somewhere between fifty five to sixty children residing

(28:30):
on that campus at any given point in time, and again,
our goal is not to keep the child there any
longer than they need to be. Our goal is to
get them into a less intense facility and to get
them onto.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
A pathway of healing.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
And the real objective is for them to be able
to move on from nightmares and start having dreams of
their own, dreams of ambition, dreams of a family of
their own, dream of education of their own, dreams of
professional aspirations of their own. We want to give them
that opportunity to dream and live and whatever it is
that they want to be, something that oftentimes when they

(29:04):
come to us, was never a gift that they ever
were able to receive, something that Dennis, you and I
most likely took for granted in our Michael.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
One last time, let's give the website the phone number
and how you can contact Child.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Help Absolutely if you have a question or a comment
or anything related to a vice that you would like
to talk with one of our counselors about.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
That number is one eight hundred for a child.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
You can find all the information on our website at
childhelp dot org.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
And we do.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
We are thankful, so incredibly thankful for the amount of
donations that come in and those that support us. We
could not operate without our donations and our donors making
our mission possible. You can donate right there on our
website at childhelp dot org.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
All right, Michael, please give my best to all the
counselors and the people on the phones, and all the
people on your team that do such incredible, tireless work.
I appreciate your leadership and your passion for what you do,
and I'm glad we could feature you on Community DC.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Thank you so much, Dennis, thank you for the opportunity.