The Awful Grace Project: Awful Grace Founder Interviewed in West Virginia

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Awful Grace Founder Interviewed in West Virginia

The West Virginia Leadership Institute for Child Abuse Prevention was held last week, with our founder Bryan Specht as one of the closing plenary session speakers. Check out his interview with West Virginia Public News Service here: Public News Service.

It was a homecoming of sorts for our founder who grew up in the Parkersburg, WV area and whose grandfather was abandoned at an orphanage in Wheeling in 1904.

Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia's Jim McKay (left), Prevent Child Abuse America's Ben Tanzer (center) and Awful Grace Society founder Bryan Specht at the West Virginia Leadership Institute for Child Abuse Prevention.

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About The Project

We all oppose child abuse, but does society have the wisdom to implement prevention on a large scale? 5 children die each day and more than 5 million children are abused or neglected each year, making the survivors 3 times more likely to commit adult violent crime and 6 times more likely to abuse drugs, at a cost of $104 billion a year to our country.

But many survivors go on to become thrivers who have healed from the pain of their abuse and gained the wisdom to lead positive, productive lives. These thrivers know that abuse could be fully preventable if we changed our perspective, policies and attitudes about preventing - not just responding to - abuse and neglect.

The Awful Grace Project is committed to harnessing the positive potential of thrivers to help advance the cause for large scale prevention.

THRIVERS READY TO DELIVER THE PREVENTION MESSAGE

Our thrivers speak throughout the year delivering the message that child abuse and neglect is preventable if we embrace the right policy and systems changes as well as embrace family development as a critical aspect of community and economic development. If you are looking for adult survivors of child abuse and neglect who have gone on to become successful, healthy THRIVERS and want to share the lessons and wisdom they have gained, please email us for more information. Contact us today if you'd like to book a speaker for your event or conference.

Our Founder

Bryan Specht is the founder of the Promised Land Society and the Awful Grace Project. A proud Appalachian, his roots run down the Ohio River into the working class hills of the Mid-Ohio Valley. As a child, he experienced repeated abuse, going on to battle depression, addictions and the self-destructiveness of a broken young man. It was the help of two complete strangers - one a policeman - that offered him the support he needed. He has spent the last fifteen years returning the favor: advocating for mental health and addiction services and child development and abuse prevention causes. His early advocacy work led him to staff positions in Congress, where he worked on Mental Health Court policies and the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000. Later, as a crisis consultant, he helped the families of the victims of flight 77 on 9/11 and worked on child trafficking and labor issues in West Africa. He went on to found the Promised Land Society, a foundation dedicated to reforming child wellbeing systems, as well as the Awful Grace Project, which seeks to promote abuse and neglect prevention through the efforts of survivors who’ve gone on to become thrivers. He serves on the National Board of Directors of Prevent Child Abuse (PCA) America and the Marcomm Committee of the American Red Cross of Chicagoland. He is the former c-chair of the Government Relations Committee for the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center. He was a featured speaker at PCA's National Conference in 2008, Mayor Daley's Office of Domestic Violence's "Spiritual Resilience and Social Fabric" conference in 2007 and was nominated to the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader's Forum in 2006. Bryan and his wife Lauren live in Illinois with their two children, Charlie and Elizabeth.

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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Awful Grace Founder Interviewed in West Virginia

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