Child & Youth Friendly Ottawa, in the spirit of cooperation, and collaboration works with citizens, school boards, community groups, government and young people to enhance the well being of Ottawa’s children and youth.
Essential to our community involvement are two simple components:
Children and Youth Participation
This is the very essense of CAYFO in the community - informing and involving children and respecting their views and experiences. Putting Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into practice, in our structure and day-to-day activities.
Real Action
CAYFO stives to push beyond statements of policy and principal and set real and achievable targets in relation to the full range of economic, social, and cultural and civil and political rights for children and young people.
Currently CAYFO serves as the lead organization for two such community wide initiatives:
The Ottawa Anti Bullying Coalition
Too many children are scared. Their fears relate to being hurt, isolated, ostracized, humiliated and terrorized at the hands of their peers. These children are often victimized on several levels. They fear reprisal if they tell anyone about the bullying. They worry that adults may make the situation worse by ‘publicly’ punishing the bully, and they dread hearing words such as “manage it yourself.. walk away from it.. be strong”.
The aim of the Ottawa Anti-Bullying Coalition is to build a safer community especially for children and youth, by increasing awareness, education and information sharing about bullying. The Goals are to:
- Raise awareness: To increase awareness of the nature, extent and impact of bullying in our community.
- Educate: To advocate for the development, evaluation and sharing of skills and resources to address bullying.
- Coordinate a Community Collaboration: To facilitate change amongst all levels of our community through recognition, ownership and responsibility for bullying.
The Ottawa Anti Bullying Coalition has hosted in collaboration with CAYFO several anti-bullying and victimization conferences.
General Membership of the Coalition: Membership represents a cross-section of the Ottawa community. It is open to all interested parties including: Public, Separate, Private Schools and School Boards, Child and Youth Serving Agencies, Religious Groups, Multicultural Groups, GLBTQ community, Universities and Colleges, Municipal, Provincial and Federal Government including Ottawa Public Health and Ottawa Police Services, Private sector, Businesses, and Citizens, including parents and youth.
Contact: oabc@cayfo.ca.
Child & Youth Friendly Ottawa Partnership
The Child & Youth Friendly Ottawa Partnership a multi-funded, inter-organizational, cooperative and synergistic working partnership that unites individuals and groups concerned with building a Child Friendly City.
The intended result is to practically engage youth and those who work for and with youth in developing a clear and ambitious strategy for building a Child Friendly City (in accordance with the 9 building blocks set out by UNICEF) here in Ottawa. By doing so, Ottawa would receive the designation of Child Friendly City from UNICEF and be the fifth such community in Canada to do so.
The nine building blocks are:
- Children's participation: promoting children's active involvement in issues that affect them; listening to their views and taking them into consideration in decision-making processes.
- A Child Friendly legal framework: ensuring legislation, regulatory frameworks and procedures which consistently promote and protect the rights of children.
- A city-wide children's rights strategy; developing a detailed, comprehensive strategy or agenda for building a Child Friendly City, based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- A Children's Rights Unit or Coordinating mechanism: developing permanent structures in local government to ensure priority consideration of children's perspectives.
- Child impact assessment and evaluation: ensuring that there is always a systematic process to assess the impact of law, policy and proactive on children’s in advance, during and after implementation.
- A children's budget: ensuring adequate resource commitment and budget analysis for children and youth.
- A regular State of the City's Children Report: ensuring sufficient monitoring and data collection on the state of children and their rights.
- Making children's rights known, ensuring awareness of children’s' rights among adults and children.
- Independent advocacy for children: supporting non-governmental organizations and developing independent human rights commissioner for children - to promote children's rights.
General Membership of the Partnership: Membership represents a cross-section of the Ottawa community. It is open to all interested parties including: Public, Separate, Private Schools and School Boards, Child and Youth Serving Agencies, Religious Groups, Multicultural Groups, GLBTQ community, Universities and Colleges, Municipal, Provincial and Federal Government Private sector, Businesses, and Citizens, including parents and youth.
Contact: childfriendlycity@cayfo.ca
