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Myrah Taylor
Taylor was able to introduce her brochure about child abuse and neglect to a children’s ministry in Nicaragua when she visited last September. Photo courtesy of Myrah Taylor.
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Myrah Taylor
For one in 60 children, fear is a daily ritual; for one in 40, neglect is the norm.
Abuse and neglect are more than the physicality of broken bones, it’s the voice in child’s head screaming, “You are worthless.”
The statistics for abuse and neglect, paired with her time volunteering with Grace House Ministries, inspired Myrah Taylor to create a weapon to combat those numbers — a brochure titled “Neglected and Abused Children.” It started as part of Taylor’s platform as Miss Oak Mountain High School and Miss Outstanding Teen, where she partnered with local child abuse centers Grace House Ministries and the Owens House.
“As a person, I don’t like seeing people get hurt or torn down,” Taylor said. “I want to help them and lift them up, and show them that they can be successful in the future because this incident that happened to them does not determine what they will be.”
She served as a peer assistant at Oak Mountain, the perfect place, she said, to introduce the brochure. The 50 other peer helpers were “perfectly positioned to determine, detect and respond to someone that was being neglected or abused,” and so they shared their knowledge with the school’s rising freshman that year.
When Taylor graduated from Oak Mountain last year, her fight to protect children took a step abroad to include children’s ministries in Nicaragua. Her double major in speech and hearing sciences and Spanish allowed Taylor to translate her brochure into Spanish, so she could share it with the teachers there.
“I wanted to introduce it there because neglect and abuse not only happen in the United States, it happens all over the world,” Taylor said.
She spent Sept. 25-27 working with children, teaching them the gospel and practicing her own Spanish with them. Through all the fun, though, Taylor watched the children for signs of abuse or neglect. She also had the opportunity to sit down with the teachers one day after class and share her brochure with them.
The thing she most remembers about the children is their gratitude. Taylor said she loved seeing the smiles on all of the kids’ faces as they frequently thanked her for any small act of kindness.
“It could be as simple as giving them a hug or saying ‘hey’ to them,” Taylor said. “They just got very excited. For the little time that we were down there for them, they were extremely grateful for that.”
Although she was only in Nicaragua for a short time, she still plans to help in any way that she can. In April, Taylor will send them blue wristbands — the color for National Child Abuse Prevention month — so those teachers and students can promote awareness.
“Neglected and Abused Children” has traveled far distances and helped a great number of people, and Taylor has even more plans for the brochure. Last year, Shelby and Jefferson Counties adopted it as an educational tool, and Taylor is currently working with the Mobile Child Advocacy Center to introduce it there.
“I was lucky enough to be brought up in a family with a mother and a father that cared for me,” Taylor said. “Just being able to see that I am able to help someone else that is struggling makes me happy inside. It’s feeling like I am able to give back to my community.”
