By Emmanuel T. Erediano
Variety News Staff

BETH Nepaial, a retired Hopwood Junior High School teacher, received the Commissioner’s Award from the U.S. Department Health and Human Services for helping government efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect.
She will be leaving for Portland, Oregon on April 16 to represent the CNMI in the 16th National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect.
Division of Youth Services volunteer program coordinator Vivian T. Sablan said she nominated Nepaial for her tireless help in parent leadership workshops, penny drive campaigns and other activities.
Sablan said the retired teacher also brought home, on separate occasions, three victims of child abuse and neglect.
Nepaial, who has two children of her own, has been a foster parent for children under the DYS foster care program. She retired from teaching in December last year.
The award, which is given only every two years, highlighted Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s signing on Friday of a proclamation designating April as Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Month with the theme “Promote Healthy Families in your Community.”
Sablan quoted Nepaial as telling her during the proclamation that she did not have to think long before agreeing to host a four-year-old boy with multiple difficulties.
Nepaial said she discovered “that a loving home is not always enough to magically heal an abused child,”
The foster parent was also quoted as saying that the “special bond formed with each child never ends,”
DYS has been holding parent workshops for two years now.
The next one will be at Oleiai Elementary School on April 28.
The division will also conduct penny drives from April to May, and the money to be collected will be used to provide children in DYS custody with personal necessities like clothes, shoes, soap and snacks.
Sablan said DYS also wants to inform the public that it is still seeking foster parents.