For our first fieldwork we scheduled an interview with Nicole Epps and Tessa Chermiset of the World Childhood Foundation. We took the D train to West 34th street and walked to their New York headquarters at 183 Madison Ave. We were greeted at their seventh floor sweet and were invited in. We were given water, and two firm handshakes. They gave us these really cute bracelets as a gift for reaching out to them. One of the first pieces of information they shared with us was that child abuse has no boundaries of gender, age, race, or class. It can happen to anyone, and though it is hidden from society, it is extremely common. We learned many people who have been subjected to sexual abuse as a child are reluctant to share what happened to them because their body enjoyed the feeling even though their mind knew it was wrong. I found this extremely sad because the child may not even know that an injustice is being done to them, and the adult is failing to protect the child. This topic is also very hard to talk about because even though sexual abuse is common, people avoid talking about it because it makes them uncomfortable. A big question that we talked about throughout the interview was how to get young people to be more aware of this issue, and to remove the shame of speaking up about it.  Nicole and Tessa asked us to think about some ways that we could get young people involved and how we can start talking about this more openly. Our job is to brainstorm some ways to do this and come back and talk about this with them after thanksgiving break. I want people to leave our teach-in with the idea that they have a good understanding of abuse and how they can identify it when it if comes into their lives. I think that having this conversation with our peers  could get them to a point where they are comfortable speaking about our this topic on their own. I think that my group’s goal is to make a point to emphasize how common an occurrence of abuse is, and work to familiarize our fellow students with that concept.