Residents showed their support for Pinwheels for Prevention by planting pinwheels into the ground in front of Fox Peak to represent victims of child abuse and to engage community awreness.
Pinwheels for Prevention had almost 60 residents participate in their walk on Saturday beginning at Millennium Park to bring awareness to child abuse prevention.
Family Specialist Lori Lombardo at Friends Family Resource Center said she was happy with the turnout. She said FFRC partnered with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe this year.
“So far it looks like we’ll have a great turn out this year,” Lombardo said. “Last year I think we had 75 to 80 participants.”
Lombardo said the Pinwheels for Prevention brings awareness to help prevent child abuse. She said it is a nation wide effort that gets supported by several cities.
Karen Stoll coordinator for FFRC said the event has been taking place in Fallon for five years.
“We’d like to bring awareness to as many people as possible,” Lombardo said. “It’s important to get our community involved in this cause so we can bring awareness and build partnerships so we can stop and prevent child abuse.”
Lombardo said local agencies have banded together to help spread the word about the prevention of child abuse.
“We’re able to help people in need,” Lombardo said. “A lot of times abuse is brought on by people who are in need of certain items, maybe they need food or something. The family structure is stressed out and they take it out on everybody … so we bring awareness to different entities around town and help them realize that there are places for them to go and get help.”
Lombardo said in the past, the pinwheels represented an individual who was abused in Fallon.
“Now the pinwheels represent prevention awareness,” Lombardo said. “The pinwheels can still represent victims of abuse, but we try to use them more to bring awareness and to represent the victims we have helped. We don’t want to bring awareness to the abuse we want to bring awareness to the prevention and how to prevent it from happening.”
Lombardo said it is important to bring awareness to this growing problem. She said bringing awareness to the cause would help lower the number of abused children.
“Our goal is to prevent child abuse,” Stoll said. “We want to offer other alternatives for what is going on. We’re here to celebrate children and to make sure they do not become abused or neglected and we think educating the public is the best way to do that.”
After the walk organizers and participants went to Oats Park to celebrate Earth Day.