To kick off the month, the Exchange Club Family Center joins with Exchange Clubs nationwide in sponsoring Casual for Kids Blue Ribbon Week in Mobile. Blue ribbons symbolize the blue bruises child abuse inflicts. Casual for Kids is a campaign which helps raise awareness of the programs offered by Exchange Club child abuse prevention centers nationwide.

Mayor Mike Dow and the Mobile County Commissioners have proclaimed April 4-10th Casual for Kids Blue Ribbon Week. Companies and schools are encouraged to allow their employees and students to purchase blue ribbon lapel pins for $1 and dress down for a day during Blue Ribbon week. All proceeds from ribbon sales will go directly to the child abuse prevention programs offered by the Exchange Club Family Center in Mobile. To have blue ribbons delivered to you or get information about our programs, please call the Exchange Club Family Center at (251) 479-5700.

For every dollar spent on child abuse prevention, six dollars are saved in foster care, prosecution, legal services, mental health services, crime and incarceration expenses. The Exchange Club Family Center receives no funding from United Way or local government. It depends on the Exchange Club of Mobile, Children’s Trust Fund and private funding for its support. Buy a blue ribbon today and show your support for child safety in this community.

Sometimes, a person never stops giving, even after their years on Earth are done. The late Sol Levin, 30-year member of the Long Beach, Calif. Exchange Club, posthumously uplifted the cause of child abuse prevention with a donation of $60,982 to The National Exchange Club Foundation.

On January 21, 2004, in Long Beach, Calif., a luncheon was held to pay tribute to Levin’s life. During that meeting, a check was presented to The National Exchange Club Executive Vice President, David A. Nershi, from the Sol Levin Charitable Remainder Trust, which he accepted on behalf of the Foundation.

"Levin took great pride in supporting organizations which promoted fair, ethical and moral values through their works. The Sol Levin Charitable Remainder Trust was his way of being able to provide an additional financial gift to those organizations that had special meaning in his life," wrote Stuart Okin, Levin’s attorney.

Levin’s family members, including daughter Gloria Glass, and over 40 Exchange Club members attended the luncheon. The luncheon featured a photo tribute and moving reminiscences by Levin?s friends and club members.

Foundation President William Ketron had this to say about the donation: "We are very pleased to accept this generous gift from the Sol Levin estate. Sol was well loved by his Exchange Club members and cared deeply about the children in his community. This gift will help us continue our important work of preventing child abuse."

Exchange, America’s Service Club, is a group of men and women working together to make our communities better places to live through programs of service in Americanism, Community Service, Youth Activities, and its national project, the Prevention of Child Abuse. To date, The National Exchange Club’s efforts have helped more than 175,000 families and 225,000 children break the cycle of child abuse.

Contact: Stacy Poca, Director of Communications, The National Exchange Club (800) 924-2643, commun@nationalexchangeclub.org, www.nationalexchangeclub.org

Debbie Baldwin, Office Manager Child Abuse Prevention Services The National Exchange Club dbaldwin61@aol.com

The Price of Child Abuse

By Samantha Levine
US News & World Report, April 9, 2001

From the costs of fixing broken arms to the tab for healing broken psyches, the nation’s price tag for helping and protecting abused children is staggering. And the bills keep rolling in long after the kids have grown up, as society pays for the cops, judges, rehab nurses, and others who must deal with the enduring scars of childhood maltreatment.

All told, child abuse costs this country upward of $94 billion every year, or $258 million a day. That’s a $1,462 annual toll for every American family, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis released this week by a Chicago-based group, Prevent Child Abuse America. And this analysis only shows “the bare minimum of what is happening out there,” according to PCAA spokesperson Kevin Kirkpatrick, because no agency is systematically tallying the nation’s actual costs. The report’s estimated costs are computed from various sources of data on everything from mental healthcare and juvenile justice to the costs of building and running adult prisons and even lost productivity in the work-place.

But even such conservative ballpark figures are useful because they graphically illustrate how much could be saved by focusing more on prevention efforts, says David Finkelhor, a sociology professor and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Without early prevention, abused and neglected children are more likely to become teen parents, and abuse alcohol and drugs. They are also more likely to become criminals as adults and to suffer from chronic health problems.

With a social problem this daunting, why are the data so scanty? It’s actually not surprising, says Finkelhor. Given the intense competition for severely limited resources, he asks: “Do we put money into rescuing endangered children or keeping track of our efforts?”

Cops, Shrinks, Rehab The daily cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States is almost $258 million. Some major sources of spending:
Hospitalization	$17 million
Mental Health and Healthcare	$12.7 million
Child Welfare	$39.5 million
Juvenile delinquency	$24 million
Adult criminality	$152 million