Stop the Silence is an amazing charity that is doing some incredibly difficult and heartbreaking work – dealing with the sexual abuse of children.

DONATE HERE

Across the world, 150 million girls and 73 million boys are subjected to forced sexual intercourse and other forms of sexual violence (WHO, 2002). In the U.S. at least one out of four girls and one out of seven boys are sexually abused by 18 years old.  Nearly 50 percent of all sexual assaults are against girls aged 15 or younger. There are an estimated 60-80 million survivors of CSA in the U.S. alone.

Life outcomes often include poor school performance, depression, psychosis, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, prostitution, drug abuse, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV, homelessness, suicide and homicide, and chronic disease. Between doctors, lawyers, social service workers and many others, it costs the U.S. billions of dollars each year to address the aftermath of the abuse – it needs to be prevented, and treated correctly if it happens.

The Mission of Stop the Silence is to expose and stop child sexual abuse and help survivors heal worldwide. The charity’s overarching goals are to:

1) help stop child sexual abuse (CSA) and related forms of violence;

2) promote healing of victims and survivors;

3) celebrate the lives of those healed.

Through their work, Stop the Silence aims to address the relationships between child sexual abuse and the broader issues of overall family and community violence, and violence within and between communities.

While the popular belief is that sexual abuse is carried out by strangers who lure their child victims, the majority is actually carried out by people in positions of trust. Family; friends of the family; teachers; community leaders and more. This leaves the child feeling as if they’re to blame – why else would someone they trust abuse them in this way?

While our original charity for February was going to be an animal-based one, the 12for12k Challenge believes strongly in what Stop the Silence is trying to achieve. We hope you do too, and help us raise much-needed funds for this inspiring cause.

DONATE HERE

• Note: When using the ChipIn widget to make your donation, the email on the front page will be the main 12for12k Charities one. However, your payment does go directly to Stop the Silence and your PayPal or Credit Card receipt will show this.

We will be keeping every charity open for donations throughout the year, so if you missed any, or are new to the 12for12k Challenge and you wish to donate, the option will be there.

We’ve just confirmed the February charity (sadly, the original one fell through) and this will be announced later today, once the donation forms are sorted out. Thanks for your support so far, guys, and let’s keep this great start going!

Until now, this hadn’t been an option with our first charity, War Child, more down to technical reasons than anything else. However, thanks to the efforts of James Topham at War Child and his IT team, there is now a PayPal option for you to make donations. One benefit of this is that you can now pay in US dollars (which given the “strength” of the Canadian dollar should help!).

My thanks again to James for getting it live and hopefully this further option will help make it easier for everyone.

Note: The PayPal option will be implemented into the War Child site today – in the meantime, you can donate using the option below, where you will be referred to the War Child PayPal account (a tax receipt will still be issued).