Child Advocacy Group Mission Kids Receives $10,000 Verizon Grant

Mission Kids Child Advocacy Center, based in East Norriton, was the happy recipient of a $10,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation Thursday afternoon, where co-founder and Montgomery county District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, Executive Director Abbie Newman and Verizon executive Daniel Reavy met there with local police chiefs to celebrate the news.

The center, which was created in 2009 to fight for the justice for abused children, supports law enforcement efforts, according to a media release. They have conducted almost 1,500 forensic interviews and they buttress Montgomery county’s child abuse investigations. 

In the Mission Kids lobby Ferman spoke for the organization and the District Attorney’s office to commend Verizon. “I have to thank you and the Verizon Foundation,” she said to Reavy. “From our first efforts to protect kids in Montgomery county, Verizon was there for us.”

Reavy, Verizon’s Director of External Affairs, brought a $10,000 check, which he presented to Mission Kids.

“We in the business community should have a role in supporting them in any way we can,” he said.

The funds will help train the Women’s Center of Montgomery County medical advocates, emergency room workers and police officers who are trained to help domestic violence victims, according to a media release.

East Norriton police chief Karyl Kates, Upper Gwynedd police chief David Duffy and Upper Providence police chief Mark Toomey arrived to lend their support.

Mission Kids Associate Director Amy Charles, who carefully assembled the organization’s application for the grant, was all smiles after the event.

According to Charles, their organization works with children of an age when they can first speak and communicate, to when they are shy of their eighteenth birthday. “You can see the relief when a child comes here, after the have undergone the worst trauma ever,” she said.