Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Child Protection topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Rotary and educators ask Lake County supervisors to partner on pilot to prevent commercial sexual exploitation of children
Summary
Community leaders and educators urged the Lake County Board of Supervisors to partner on a pilot program to prevent commercial sexual exploitation of children that pairs trained high-school students with middle-school peer education and parent training.
Speakers during the public-input period described a community-led pilot aimed at preventing commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) and asked the board to partner to help scale and sustain the effort.
Michael Contos, a resident and team leader for the Lake County Rotary Club CSEC project, outlined a dual-approach pilot that pairs trained Kelseyville High School students with middle-school peer presentations and specialized parent training led by the PolyClass Foundation. Contos said the pilot focuses on prevention and parental participation: "We need to equip our most susceptible groups, our middle school students and their parents with the tools to protect themselves before exploitation even begins," he said.
Mark Lipps, the Rotary area governor, described logistics and seed funding. Lipps said each local Rotary club contributed $2,300 and the clubs secured a matching grant from the Rotary district in Northern California; organizers still need funds for printed materials and parent outreach. Lipps said organizers have scheduled remaining school meetings (Middletown still pending) and planned meals, childcare and incentives to maximize parent attendance in January — Human Trafficking Awareness Month.
April Leiferman, a longtime educator and former superintendent, described personal and professional experiences with abused children and said prevention must reach middle-school students through credible youth messengers: "Middle schoolers also think that the worst thing that could happen is their parent find out that they were online and doing things they weren't supposed to do. Right? That's where their development is. But what they also do is they listen to older students more than us adults," she said.
Other civic leaders, including representatives of Soroptimist International of Clear Lake, described past awareness work and urged continued collaboration among nonprofit groups, schools and government to expand prevention efforts countywide. Organizers asked the board — specifically naming Supervisors Owen, Sabatier, Pyszka, Chair Crandall and Vice Chair Rasmussen — to partner to help the pilot become a countywide model.
No board action on the pilot was recorded in the public portion of the meeting excerpt; the comments were public testimony asking the board to support, partner or otherwise assist with outreach and scaling.
Organizers said the pilot is launching in Kelseyville, with the goal of videotaping and sharing the model across Lake County; they requested county partnership primarily to maximize parental participation and sustainability beyond the seeded Rotary funding.
