Concerning: Balenciaga Announces Partnership With National Children's Alliance, After Exploiting Kids In Ads And Glamourizing Pedophilia
Fashion house Balenciaga and Kering Foundation have announced their multi-year partnership with National Children's Alliance on Instagram, months after the brand released its disturbing campaign featuring children and teddy bears in sex gear.
Balenciaga and Kering Foundation have announced a partnership with the non-profit organization known as the National Children's Alliance (NCA) to "train" professionals who specialize in child abuse.
The NCA is a "membership organization" that provides support to abused children by bringing them to one of their care centers, more specifically, a "Children's Advocacy Center" (CAC). Potential abuse victims are taken to a CAC to undergo an investigation and intervention process for case decisions to be made, as written on their website.
"Support from Balenciaga will enable NCA to train nearly 2,000 professionals specialized in child abuse and up to an estimated 55,000 children will benefit by receiving evidence-based mental healthcare over the three-year program," the fashion house shared on Instagram.
According to the luxury brand, their program will focus on "three pillars":
"Support National Children Alliance Mental Health Institute help children heal from trauma by facilitating a significant increase in access to trauma-focused cognitive behavioral training."
It continues, "Provide education for Balenciaga about child protection and actions adults can take to promote the safety and well-being of children." Lastly, the third pillar will "raise awareness on child abuse and child protection and promoting a happy, healthy childhood."
In November 2022, Balenciaga released their Gift Shop campaign that featured young children holding teddy bears in bondage gear. They removed those photos from their website, but the replacement images weren't any better. Users found disturbing documents and books in the background that seemed to glamourize pedophilia and cannibalism.
As if things couldn't get any worse, social media personalities later found that the CEO of Balenciaga's parent company, Kering, owned a website that sold "art pieces" of kids with erect penises as faces. What's more, the fashion house's creative director – Demna Gvasalia – has admitted in the past to growing up with child pornography.
National Children's Alliance isn't the only organization the company has links to. Demna is actually an ambassador for United24, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's fundraising platform for the country.
With all of these findings coming to the light, it makes sense why some people may have concerns over Balenciaga associating itself with children again. If National Children's Alliance truly cared about the safety of their kids, wouldn't they be worried about partnering with them as well?
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