In the beginning of Dec., OHS had an interesting visitor talk to Sociology classes about Cope 24.

Cope 24 is led by Missouri resident, Renee Howitt, who travels throughout the whole state educating students about parenting and about child abuse. Cope 24 (Changing Our Parenting Experience 24 Hours a Day) has been running for five years.

“The root of most of the problems in our society is child abuse and neglect,” Howitt says.

Howitt and her husband witnessed it first hand. She fostered two young kids after they were neglected by their family. After talking to the children, she heard about how poorly the children were being treated. But  then she realized how the law did very little to help them. In fact, multiple times the law allowed the kids to go back to live with their mom when the courts new they were abused.

Howitt also published a book called “Whose Best Interest,” which is a journal about her experience with taking care of two abused kids.

Her mission now is to get everyone educated and stop child abuse. She also hopes to mandate this into the curriculum in school classes.

Pepsi is also involved. The Pepsi Refresh Program has over 1000 ideas in the running, and only the top ten will win $25,000 to put into their cause. The voting will end on Dec. 31. Howitt is hoping to be in that top ten in order to grow the Cope organization.

As of now, Howitt has traveled around to 145 schools and spoken to about 13,000 students to educate them about how to take care of a child or understand what they want.

If you are interested in this organization, you could help them by texting 104338 to Pepsi (73774).