Everyone dreams. Not all are remembered but for the then stay-at-home mom, Alli Neal, the early 2009 dream is recalled clear as day.
The unemployment recession hit the Neal family and while she turned to prayer for guidance, her prayers were met with silence, she said.
Going on for nearly five months, Neal said, “God you know I am not a patient person and I’ve been really patient. I need answers and I need them now. That’s when I had this very vivid experience like you read about in the Old Testament where God is talking to or calling on somebody unlikely to do something that needs to be done.
“I was sitting across the room from this person I knew to be God. God was saying you’ve been asking and here’s my answer. This is what I need you to do, here is how you are going to do it, and here is who you are going to serve, what it looks like and I woke up the next morning with every single bit of it,” she recounted.
Despite having no personal experience or frame of reference, Neal co-founded Revved Up Kids, honoring the “Old Testament revelation dream” backed by God’s provisions working to prevent sexual abuse.
Neal said that “the average age of a victim of sexual abuse is 8 years old. Your child is never too young to have this conversation.”
She added that “more than 90% of the time the victim knows their abuser.”
Primarily serving the 13 counties of metro Atlanta, the large percentage of the work is done in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett. Over 20 programs are offered through in-person, online, virtual and video presentations. The co-founder and executive director stated that they have trained “almost 40,000 youth since 2010.”
The nonprofit provides children as young as five years old, teens and various youth organizations - including neighborhoods - with age-appropriate training programs designed to empower the youth to identify sexual predators and dangerous situations.
Credit: conr
Credit: conr
Examples of the subject matter for elementary school-aged kids cover unsafe people, how to create a strong personal boundary setting, ability to say no, using their voice, what to do if they are actually grabbed and the lies: tricky, trouble and scary, she said.
“The middle schoolers and teenagers have a very different set of dangers and also predators are approaching them in a different way,” Neal said. “Our training for them is about understanding their risk ... and we have different sessions.”
Credit: contri
Credit: contri
For the parents and caregivers, Revved Up Kids offers two seminars that improve the optics of the adults. Offered at no charge for a group of at least 15 adults, the course discusses child safety tips ideal for parents of children up to middle school. The second, “Social Savvy for Parents,” addresses five danger zones in the online world beneficial for any parent.
“We partner with PTA’s, and work with the Roswell and Decatur police departments to host training for the public, and are working to “replicate those police partnerships with other parts of town,” she added.
As a tenant of their nonprofit, at least one group is trained for free each time a group pays the tuition for the program(s).
“The work that we are doing is really important and valuable for all of us ... because sexual abuse is just this ripple across everything. It’s this unseen plague. We can’t pretend this doesn’t exist,” the co-founder stated. “We need to get comfortable talking about it with our children and we need to make sure that they are safe.”
For more information about Revved Up Kids or about their upcoming fundraiser, Shamrock ‘n’ Roll, visit www.revvedupkids.org.
Each Sunday we write about a deserving person or charity events such as fun-runs, volunteer projects and other community gatherings that benefit a good cause. To submit a story for us to cover, send to ajc.doinggood@gmail.com.
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