Becoming a Champion for Children this Election

As a child’s rights defender and someone takes a stand for children in crisis, now is a crucial time for your voice to be heard! It’s officially campaign season in the lead up to our fall election, and over the coming weeks, your local candidates will be reaching out: knocking on doors, making phone calls, sending emails and text messages.

Please share your passion for children with your local candidates, asking them to make a firm commitment to put children front and centre of their election promise. Whether it’s here in Canada or overseas, we want to let all candidates running in the election know that Canadians care about children’s rights.

By working together, we can use this election to generate fresh momentum in Canada on behalf of children – so that even without their own vote, children know that we are standing in solidarity with them, their rights and their futures.

All children, both here in Canada and around the world, have the same rights: access to quality education, health, clean water and adequate food; to protection from violence, to live with their families, to have a say in decisions that affect them, and much more.

Here at home, Indigenous children often face rights violations on countless fronts: living in extreme poverty, separated from their families, girls continue to face murder and go missing, lacking access to clean water, and already feeling the dire impacts of climate induced disaster. While we are working to address some of these issues now through our programs here in Canada, we also need our leaders to take action. Without meaningful commitments from the next government to fulfill Indigenous children’s rights, there’s a real risk of serious and lasting effects on young people’s futures.

Overseas, more than 420 million children are now estimated to be caught in deadly conflict zones – many trapped without access to life-saving aid, forced to the frontlines as child soldiers, and face brutal sexual violence. Their schools and hospitals are bombed, and millions face extreme threats to their survival through exposure to deadly cholera epidemics, famine, and the targeting of aid and aid workers who provide life-saving care.

Children in crisis in Canada and around the world need Canadians to stand up for them, to speak out when their rights are violated, and to commit to real change for children.

Join us in calling on all electoral candidates to be a #Champion4Children and commit to put children front and centre in this election. The next time your local candidates get in touch, make your voice heard, and let them know you expect them to champion children’s rights.

Together, we can build Canadian leadership for children.

By: Annie Bodmer-Roy