Children at the Centre: Reflections on National Children's Day
Yaw Bayyim, Project Coordinator, Stride Advocacy
One will ask, why were you at a National Children’s Day event? Don't you work with older youth? And I will answer…..children are the future.
This year for National Children’s Day, members of the JHC team attended the Alberta Resource Centre for Quality Enhancement (ARCQE) Conference from November 21-22, where over 600 professionals working with young people came together under the theme, “SpARCQEing Change in Children’s Best Interests,” grounded in Article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This emphasizes the importance of placing children at the centre of all decisions and actions that affect them.
Educators from all over Canada convened at the Edmonton Convention Centre to celebrate the two day event and the JHC was present to launch our Intersections Youth report. After a successful setup, we welcomed educators to our booth to share our success story with them.
The Intersections Youth project began in late 2024. As someone who wonders about youth aging out of care, I knew there was the need to have conversations around young people passing through “the system.” A year before we had embarked on a rural youth session and many issues were raised, including the difficulties that come along with young people assessing legal resources and that is how the youth beading circle came about. We facilitated sessions with young people from Wetaskiwin, Edmonton and Grande Prairie through beading and gathered information to build a report and a legal resource to support young people.
We were fortunate to have about 200 passing through our booth at the conference. There were many questions asked about who we were. A lot of resources were given out including the intersections report (which was the highlight), stickers, which went so fast, the Youth Guide to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, among others. Conference organizers planned a scavenger hunt which resulted in many coming over for a point to win while learning about us and allowing us to bring the voice of young people to them through the report, documentary, podcast and legal resource map. One participant shared with us how their brother is on the street in a small town in Alberta and how difficult it is to access resources to support him. There is no bussing to and from and the only way for their brother is to bike to either Edmonton or Red Deer which is days away.
Something interesting that I encountered was how many participants who live in Edmonton did not know about the JHC. Human rights is everybody’s right and that means we should not stop doing this work. This is why we invite you to support us with our endowment fund to support this work and win as well.