IDAHO FALLS – Vendors and community members gathered Saturday at the first Greater Tater Tot Festival at Sandy Downs in Idaho Falls to raise awareness and money to end child abuse.

Hosted and organized by the Greater Idaho Falls Chamber, the festival also honored the history of Tater Tots.

Thanks to the recently formed Protect Your Tots Foundation, local groups and retailers like Champs Heart, the Bonneville County Sheriff, the Idaho Falls Police Department and Idaho Steel came together to celebrate the history of the little fried potato snack.

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Leslie Grigg of Ammon and his cousin Steve Grigg recently founded the nonprofit organization that raises funds to prevent child abuse.

“Protect Your Little Ones” was the theme of the day and all proceeds went to the new Family Justice Center, a central location for the domestic violence and sexual assault center to process its cases.

Steve says he and Leslie are proud that their fathers, F. Nephi and Golden Grigg, founded Ore-Ida, the company that invented the potato pancake.

F. Nephi and Golden Grigg were victims of child abuse, according to Steve, and the family uses their platform to advocate for young victims around the world.

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“My dad and my uncle came from a family of 13. They were all very close. I know it was a different time and they were on their own a lot,” says Steve. “Those two boys never went to school.”

Steve says it is his hope that such an event can be held every year and that one day he can make a generous donation to a local hospital to sponsor a room where victims can find a comfortable, safe environment and safely report cases of abuse.

“When you’re a child being questioned by the police, you don’t want it to take place in a cold interrogation room. Children want an environment that’s more like a living room,” says Steve. “Somewhere where there are toys and where they feel comfortable, where they can process and come to terms with what’s happened.”

Organizations in attendance included Champs Heart, Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office, Idaho Falls Police, and Idaho Steel.

The Idaho Steel booth demonstrated how potato pancakes are made at a speed of 12,000 pounds per hour.

As part of the event, participants received a free basket of potato pancakes and learned how to protect their little ones at home from cybercrime, bullying and many other forms of child abuse.

CJ Scarlet, a child safety advocate and author of Heroic Parenting and Raising Bad Kids, was invited to speak at the event about giving children the courage to speak up in difficult situations.

When she heard that Leslie and Steve had started a nonprofit organization to support victims of child abuse, she came up with the idea of ​​calling it “Protect Your Tots.”

Scarlet, a victim of child abuse herself, says that only 7% of child abuse victims are abused by strangers. The rest are abused by people they know.

“People think child abuse is a problem that can’t be solved, but that’s not true,” says Scarlet. “By teaching our children to say no, to trust their intuition, to set and defend their boundaries, and to come to us when they feel uncomfortable or afraid.”

Scarlet says the most important advice for parents who want to protect their children is to be careful online.

“You have to be on your guard against strangers on the Internet,” says Scarlet. “There’s so much you can do, and our children can protect themselves better than we think.”

Andrea Todd, spokeswoman for Idaho Steel, enthusiastically supported Grigg’s cause and highlighted the economic impact the potato chips had on Idaho and the rest of the world.

“The Tater Tot Festival is an expression of gratitude to the Tater Tot and to the long history of the Idaho tuber itself,” says Todd. “It’s not just about our agriculture, but about all the other industries that are affected.”