Red Carpet Christmas dinner & style show
to benefit the Children's Advocacy Center

By Paul de la Peña-Franceschi

Supporters of the Children's Advocacy Center (CAC) are preparing for the holidays with style and with a commitment to help those truly in need in the Gateway City. Fashion meets the desire to make a difference in the Red Carpet Christmas gala dinner, style show, and auction benefiting the CAC. The event will be held Thursday, December 4 at the Laredo Country Club at 7:00 p.m.
Joe Brand will once again sponsor the benefit style show and dinner. Also assisting this year will be the Lamar Bruni Vergara Trust, which has a long history of generosity throughout the city and was recently added to this year's short list of sponsors, as well as the International Bank of Commerce and L&F Distributors. The CAC's collective goal is to raise funds to build a new center and to move from its current location on Cedar Avenue in the heart of the Heights area.
The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture will provide pro bono design services for the new CAC facility. According to UT associate professor Juan Miro, this project design is a first for the school in South Texas. The architectural school completed a sight study, which included the cultural background of the city, border conditions, the current rate of growth, and its history. The project will be one of the largest in the school's history for this type of outreach program.
The Children's International Advocacy Center of Webb County was established by the Webb County District Attorney's office and by a group of community leaders, including District Attorney Joe Rubio, who identified a need for the protection of children who were victims of sexual and physical abuse. Through the use of a special Child Abuse Task Force, a system was established to protect children from further victimization.
The Task Force determined that child services were lacking in the areas of communication between agencies, resulting in wasted resources and inefficiency of services for abused children. As a result, the Children's Advocacy Center was created to serve as the central agency for victims of abuse and neglect.
Through this establishment, the Center was able to coordinate services more efficiently and effectively for all agencies responsible for working with abused children. The CAC became a 501c(3) organization in 1995, and became fully operational in 1997. The Center was designed to provide a child-friendly environment for services that would be non-threatening and sensitive to the needs of the victims. Additionally, the Center facilitates the coordination of services for the child victim and non-offending family members.
The CAC has outlined five primary goals that include the prevention of child abuse through educational and support programs; providing assistance to sexually and physically abused children; reducing the trauma of abused children by coordinating intervention services with other agencies; offering training to professionals in Laredo and Webb County to improve their response to child abuse; and facilitating a local forensic research project aimed at providing solid evidence for criminal prosecution of child abusers.
The center also provides individual, family, and group counseling sessions for child victims of abuse, neglect, and domestic violence. Services include therapy, treatment planning, safety planning, court school training, forensic interviews, victim's compensation application completion assistance, and referrals to other needed services. The center also facilitates a weekly review of cases through the multidisciplinary team composed of partner agencies.
Because the CAC is involved in so many areas, it is difficult to become engaged in a wide variety of fundraising activities as a non-profit agency. Therefore charitable gifts and public donations to carry on its valuable work sustain them. The upcoming bi-annual fundraiser is one way the community shows its support for the Center's work. To reserve a table at the Red Carpet Christmas gala or for more information, contact Melinda M. Landin at 712-1840.