Silly Americans believe that awareness can solve anything. It can't, but it could be argued that to solve a problem, you at least have to make people aware of it. The idea is that people do it, others ask about it, and soon lots of people are at least thinking about the problem of child abuse. Of those, a certain percentage will feel so strongly that they'll do something about it, like donate money or volunteer at a children's shelter or something.
And of course because it's kinda cool to be a cartoon character for a while.