In its twenty-eighth year running, the annual Life Walkathon put on by the Community Pregnancy Centers of Northwest Ohio (CPC) made its way to Wauseon’s Homecoming Park this year. With dedicated people willing to walk for their cause, the pavilion of the park played host to those wishing to take part.
With offices in Bryan Napoleon, Defiance, and Wauseon, it was the latter’s turn to host the event. Homecoming Park, with its large size and majestic beauty made for the ideal location to hold it.
The money raised will go toward a good many things the CPC offers to those in need for free. Things like counseling, pregnancy and std tests, and even items such as diapers and formula are routinely handed out free of charge by the organization.
The CPC is known to encourage abstinence in teens, and the organization is active in promoting it. Representatives are often invited into local schools to discuss the issue with students. Using creative methods such as using bleach in water to show how diseases can spread, as well as how it’s impossible to decipher who it was that gave a particular student said disease, their methods have generally proven effective. Of course, none of that matters if they don’t have the gas to make it to an area, and money from this even will help fund that as well.
Counseling is an important aspect of the CPC. An effort is made to have counselors who have been through the things in which they attempt to guide a person through, giving more weight to the voice of experience. Being able to relate to those who come to them also tends to make counselors significantly less judgemental, which is always a concern for those who share their darkest moments with complete strangers.
Abortion, especially, is a hot button issue in which the CPC deals. While discouraging the act, they still offer counseling for both the mother and the father of an aborted baby. Emphasis on the father is something in which they take pride, as that aspect of the situation is often overlooked and undervalued by society at large.
Funding for such programs is a huge benefit for the communities in which the CPC serves, as taking on such problems alone can really hinder the way in which one lives.
Of course, the giving away of free stuff is always a crowd pleaser. Giving away may not be the best way to put it, though. People wishing to obtain goods such as diapers and other things essential to raising a child, are required to take brief courses and earn points to spend. The idea is to educate young mothers as well as supply them with what they need.
There are several ways in which the CPC improves the area, and they face issues some would rather ignore head on in an effort to ease the difficulties of those dealing with them. Every penny that was and will be donated to the CPC will better the community.
Perhaps we should look forward to the twenty-ninth annual Life Walkathon.