Listen to thisAt the 13th National Child and Youth Care Conference held in Calgary from October 12-14, 2004, one of the keynote speakers was Stephen Lewis. Part of Mr. Lewis' bio from the conference program reads as follows:
On June 1, 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Stephen Lewis as his Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Mr. Lewis' work with the UN has shaped the past two decades of his career. From 1995-1999, Mr. Lewis was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF at the organization's global headquarters in New York. He was first appointed as Special Representative for UNICEF in 1990. In that capacity, he spoke and traveled regularly, acting as a spokesperson for UNICEF’s passionate advocacy of the rights and needs of children, especially children of the developing world.
The title of Stephen Lewis' key note speech was “Should We Mount the Barricades for Children and Youth?” He spoke strongly and eloquently about the plight of children across the world, particularly in developing countries, and the need for us all to become stronger advocates for these children.
As Child and Youth Care workers, we have the privilege of being part of children's lives, of having the opportunity to create change. Stephen Lewis reminded us that there’s still a lot of work to be done. While it’s easy for us to get caught up in the day to day struggles with our own young people, in our own agencies, we need to remember that there are millions of other children and youth, across our country and around the world, who need our attention and our advocacy. As Stephen Lewis so powerfully put it, we need to move from the individual to the collective. We must, as Child and Youth Care workers, start publicly advocating for children and youth, loudly and globally. If we don’t do it, who will?
The recent Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia has highlighted what happens when there is a crisis – individuals and governments respond. This illustrates the best of human nature, and the result of increased pressure on government to do something. Unfortunately, without continued attention and exposure, the perception of crisis, and the response to it, can wane. In order to push foreword the children and youth agenda, therefore, we need to create and sustain a public crisis too large and powerful for individuals and governments to ignore. There are concrete ways in which this can be achieved.
For example, what would happen if all Child and Youth Care workers across the country, or better, across the world, started publicly advocating for children and youth? If we became politically savvy, and started challenging our governments to really focus on the needs of children and youth in our communities? What if we started showing up, en masse, to public forums and expressing our views? Or called in to radio talk shows, and wrote letters to the editors of our local newspapers? What if we got our young people involved in helping children from developing countries? What if they became public advocates? What if we took them to Africa or Thailand and gave them the opportunity to provide meaningful assistance? What if we had recognizable leaders in the field (or celebrities, as Carol Stuart has so astutely proposed) who were able to navigate the bureaucracy of upper level government and put pressure on “the right people” to keep children and youth at the forefront of the political agenda? What if our Child and Youth Care Associations had political clout? We could create an ongoing crisis big enough to elicit a meaningful response. Together, we really could change the world for children and youth.
If we are truly committed to children, we need to be committed to all children, everywhere. This means moving from the micro level, day-to-day interventions to the macro level. We need to be aware of, and appalled at, the atrocities happening in our own country, and in other countries, and then we need to do something about. We all have a role to play.
I made a promise to Stephen Lewis that I would become more involved, that I would advocate, lobby, and start lending my voice to the voices of children around the world. I intend to keep that promise. This is a start.
Please join me.
