Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 26th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Good morning, everyone. Pursuant to standing order 108(2), we're going to continue our study of the protection of children and youth in developing countries.

Before we do that I know that Mme Laverdière would like to read a motion, to put a notice of motion on the table.

I'll turn it over to you to read your motion into the record.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to put forward the following motion:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee undertake a study of the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, with a particular focus on the influx of Syrian refugees, including the impact of that population on the host community, and that it report its findings back to the House once the study has been completed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

I believe you just wanted to put in a motion right now. We're not going to debate it or anything. She's just putting in a motion.

To our guests, to our witnesses, thank you for your patience. These things happen from time to time, these things called votes, so we appreciate your patience with that.

I want to introduce Mary Anne Roche, who is the vice-president of global initiatives and governance of the YMCA. I would also like to introduce Patricia Pelton, who is a member of the YMCA Canada world relationships committee.

Welcome, ladies, to both of you.

What we're going to do today is this. I believe you have an opening statement of around 10 minutes or so. We're going to get your opening statement and then what we're going to do is that we may start with one round of questioning. At 12:00 we're going to get someone on video conference. We'll continue, we'll get them to do their testimony, and then we'll just continue to go around the room there.

Why don't we get started with you young ladies with your opening testimony, then we'll start with questions?

Okay, thanks.

[Patricia Pelton, Member, YMCA Canada World Relationships Committee, YMCA Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee.

Good morning, I am Patricia Pelton, a volunteer member of YMCA Canada's national board world relationships committee and immediate past member of the executive committee of the World Alliance of YMCAs. Accompanying me is Mary Anne Roche, vice-president, global initiatives and governance, of YMCA Canada.

The challenges facing young people around the world seem daunting. With nearly half the world's seven billion population comprised of children and youth and a record number now living in developing countries, we share your concerns of the many risks facing children and youth on a daily basis, risks that have been the focus of this committee's deliberations in recent months.

The YMCA was established in Canada over 160 years ago as a charity dedicated to advancing the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Within Canada our strategic plan “Plan Y” commits us to improving the well-being of children and youth at home and abroad. At home, 1.5 million of the over two million Canadians in YMCA programs and services are young people.

As part of a global YMCA network we have also gained a significant amount of experience with children and youth in our work with international partners. We have been particularly active with our partner YMCAs in Africa and the Americas, in Bogotá with street children and in Sierra Leone with former child soldiers, to name just two.

Globally speaking, the YMCA is present in 119 countries with over 11,000 locations, 96,000 employees, and 725,000 volunteers worldwide reaching 58 million people through YMCA programs.

The YMCA's hallmark is creating the safe spaces for children and youth required for young people to achieve their full potential, ensuring that young people have a voice on issues of concern to their growth and development in their families and communities, and equipping youth with transformational tools that empower them to lead productive adult lives. Our approach to youth empowerment is a collaborative community-building model with local leadership that is inclusive of young people, focusing internationally with youth on issues of health, employment and vocational training, environmental sustainability, and civic engagement.

I'm going to turn this over to Mary Anne to speak more specifically about some of the key approaches that drive our work with young people and their application internationally.

[Mary Anne Roche, Vice-President, Global Initiatives and Governance, YMCA Canada]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of the standing committee.

I would like to speak to you very briefly about three strategies for youth empowerment that we have tested in a wide variety of settings and which have proved transformational in our work both at home and abroad.

First, we enable young people's empowerment using the assets-based approach through education, training, volunteer opportunities, social networks, and other social determinants of health. We do this in a manner that gives explicit value to the role of women and minorities in society, and in this way contributes to efforts to eradicate those issues of particular concern to this committee by working on the underlying social determinants of these abuses. Our work has a strong emphasis on youth leading youth. By building community among young people, we build their resilience and encourage their positive involvement in civil society.

The youth empowerment model used by the Africa Alliance of YMCAs, called “subject to citizen”, is an excellent example of the use of peer education and dialogue to trigger a positive shift in youth self-identity.

Second, community building through local leadership puts the emphasis on “nothing about us without us”. It sets local YMCAs on a path toward sustainability as opposed to reliance on foreign advice or resources. All YMCAs are formed, owned, and operated by local leadership. This means that local grassroots YMCAs, with their capacity, know-how, deep roots, and networks are frequently able to serve communities experiencing conflict or instability. When Canadian YMCAs get involved overseas, they do so through a partnership model, providing financial and technical support to match local social capital for projects that respond to local needs.

My last point is about the importance of strengthening civil society in the local communities in which we work. Partnerships and collaborations built on the ground are key, both to the cost-efficient and effective use of resources and to creating a strong and resilient social platform that can be leveraged in many ways for different purposes. This work may take many forms: training and democratic decision-making, media outreach, public engagement activities, and citizen participation. This work is well aligned with the federal government's new emphasis in its recently announced civil society partnership policy.

In closing, we are a voice for the world's young people, who account today for some 40% of the global unemployed, with long-term consequences for their individual, family, and community health and well-being. It's important that our work internationally, as the YMCA and as a country, creates options for the world's youth and builds their sense of hope, choice, and alternatives to crime, street life and gangs, and violence and war, especially in contexts where there are few employment opportunities. Their more active participation in civic and political life needs to be seen as an untapped asset.

YMCA Canada encourages the federal government to invest in youth empowerment strategies by committing greater resources to initiatives that employ peer-to-peer dialogue, community building with local leadership, and civil society strengthening, and by advocating for more emphasis on young people and their concerns in the post-MDG agenda.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the work of the committee. We are both happy to answer any questions you might have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to start our first round with Madame Laverdière for seven minutes.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for your very interesting presentations on youth empowerment and giving hope to youth, which I think are very key issues, especially nowadays when we're seeing so many challenges and so many youth taking different paths, often because they don't have hope.

That being said, you mentioned briefly the post-2015 agenda. I wonder if you think that the SDGs' target sufficiently reflects the needs of youth. Would you comment on that?

[Mary Anne Roche]

Yes, thank you for the question.

The short answer is going to be no. I think there's opportunity with the goals that have been, in my understanding, fairly well agreed to—the 17 or so goals—to create a greater emphasis on youth within the targets. Youth are specifically mentioned in several of the targets that are currently under discussion, but there may well be opportunities to further highlight areas where we want to ensure that people looking at the goals understand that the work needs to include young people, and particularly, perhaps, in the goal related to youth participation.

There's always a risk that, if we don't mention youth by name, they may inadvertently be left out. I think there might be an opportunity to include them.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

You're suggesting more or less that it become mainstream, as it did with women's issues, at some point. I'd like to know some of the challenges you are facing on the ground and how the government could help address those challenges.

[Mary Anne Roche]

I'll start and Patricia can join in.

I think when you talk about the “we” you're referencing the YMCAs in other countries. I think the enabling environment for civil society, which has been one of the objectives of the new civil society partnership policy, is certainly critical for that. Continued funding for initiatives that target children and youth continue to be important.

The challenges on the ground relate to the challenges that children and youth face within particular contexts. It's hard to talk about them in a general sense. You have to look at the country context in order to look at the situation for children and youth. Broadly speaking there are great opportunities to increase opportunities for young people to contribute to the development of national policy and to have the ability to go to school. We know there's a huge youth unemployment challenge around the world that we need to address, and I know that's one of the targets currently in the SDGs. One of the challenges is for children's and youth rights to be respected by governments.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

You mentioned education also, which of course is key. Are you in any kind of relationship with the Global Partnership for Education?

[Mary Anne Roche]

At YMCA Canada we are not. There would be YMCAs involved around the world in various aspects of that particular work. When we're in public forums at the United Nations, or other multilateral forums, we are advocating for education. We're looking more at informal education. Our experience with after-school programs, for instance, tells us that it's important for children to have those kinds of experiences in addition to formal education programs. Community-based programming for children and youth is critical.

[Patricia Pelton]

I was going to say that there are many universities across the globe that are involved in post-secondary education at the university level or with more formal education. We'll talk more about the leadership training that we're involved in and some leadership certification courses. Predominantly YMCAs are interested in vocational training, or in other words, getting youth prepared to work and with the desire that jobs would be available. Trying to affect policy in job creation is important, and arming youth with the tools to be able to do that and have a voice is part of our work.

Thanks.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Could you give us examples of the types of activities you do parallel to school and after school—community activities? Could you give us one or two example of the types of activities you do?

[Mary Anne Roche]

Most of our YMCAs, for example the Haiti YMCA, would be running programming for children after school. In those programs they would be learning about children's rights. They would have opportunities for recreation, food, some nutrition, fellowship, and leadership development, as Patricia noted. A big focus of the YMCA work right around the world is leadership development. We're in 119 countries, so that kind of work is very common across all of those countries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. What we're going to do is suspend for a couple of minutes so we can get our next witness online. We'll have them give their presentation and we'll continue with the questions. Okay? It's probably going to be quick.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'd like to welcome our guests that are joining us via video conference.

From Markham, Ontario, we have Mark Lukowski, the chief executive officer of the Christian Children's Fund of Canada.

Welcome, Mark. It's great to have you here.

Also joining us via video conference from New York City is Sarah Stevenson from the ChildFund Alliance, who is the United Nations representative.

What I'm going to do is get you both to give your opening comments. We've just had our opening statement and one round of questions. Once we have your opening statement then we'll continue with our rounds of questioning.

Mark, I'm going to turn it over to you, sir, for your opening statement first, and then we'll go over to Sarah after that.

Welcome.

[Mark Lukowski, Chief Executive Officer, Christian Children's Fund of Canada]

Thank you very much for having us. Thank you for the opportunity to address the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

As was mentioned earlier, I would like to acknowledge the presence of my colleague, Sarah Stevenson, who is online with me today from New York. Sarah is the United Nations representative of ChildFund Alliance, a global network of child development organizations of which Christian Children's Fund of Canada is a member.

We warmly welcome and support the government in its leadership role of protection of children and youth. The national action plan to combat human trafficking is recognized as a successful government approach to preventing this form of violence against children.

We thank the Canadian government for its ongoing support to the United Nations cluster child protection working group to improve response, increase accountability, and progressively professionalize the sector of child protection in emergencies. We also thank the Government of Canada for its support of the declaration on violence against children within the post-2015 agenda at the OAS General Assembly that was held last year in Asunción, Paraguay.

As a Canadian-based registered charity and child-centred international development organization, Christian Children's Fund of Canada has been working in developing countries for more than 50 years helping to improve the lives of millions of children around the world. Violence against children is a universal problem affecting children at every stage of development. It takes place in every setting, starting in a child's own home. Failing to address violence against children compromises progress in many other areas, such as getting children into schools and enabling children to learn and develop to their full potential.

In our view, stopping violence is not just the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do. Without ending violence against children, it is almost impossible to finish the ambitious job that was started by the UN millennium development goals back in the year 2000: to bring an end to preventable newborn, child, and maternal deaths; to ensure that every child learns in schools; and to ensure that all people have access to sustainable food, nutrition, water, sanitation, and energy.

A permanent end to violence against children is possible. We have cost-effective interventions that work, including positive parenting programs and life skills education, and changing long-established social norms that institutionalize violence against children.

Schools by definition should be places where children feel protected and safe, and where their dignity and development are upheld. Violence is amply recognized as an obstacle to achieving education outcomes, both in terms of coverage and quality, as it hinders effective learning and has a negative effect in school attendance and enrolment.

The issue of legal identity is an important step to ensure children are free from violence. Birth registration can be greatly assistive in preventing child labour, preventing children being engaged with armed forces, preventing child trafficking, and managing situations where children are in conflict with the law.

Our work in communities around the world has taught us that child and community development must go hand in hand with education and intervention to help children be safe from violence and exploitation. To ensure we are able to achieve the results for children in health and education, this will not be possible unless we address the issues of violence in schools, homes, institutions, families, and communities. In every country we work, our work includes education and advocacy on keeping children safe from violence and exploitation.

Currently, more than half a million children and families benefit from Christian Children's Fund of Canada's work, and more than 50,000 children are sponsored in our programs. Christian Children's Fund of Canada uses community-based child protection mechanisms to increase awareness, and to reduce and eliminate violence against boys and girls. These protection mechanisms include children, parents, and local authorities, as well as traditional and religious leaders. Our goal is to have a child protection mechanism in place in every community where we work.

Our child protection committees have used structures such as a coffee ceremony in Ethiopia to discuss taboo topics of child labour, girls' education, abduction, child marriage, female genital mutilation or cutting, and other harmful traditional practices. Many children now have a birth certificate, thanks to the efforts of the various child protection committees in Ethiopia that have established linkages with local birth and civil registration services.

In Ghana, child-to-child groups are a pivotal part of the child protection system in the community. These groups have raised awareness on the importance of keeping children in school and have also been a crucial early warning system of violence in the family, the school, and the community. In Nicaragua and Paraguay, community child protection committees have successfully advocated for the inclusion of child rights on the ruling and opposition parties’ political agendas.

As governments throughout the world come together at the United Nations this September to finalize the sustainable development goals, it is vital that the issue of violence and exploitation perpetrated against children is explicitly addressed in the new development agenda, by being included not only across the goals but as a stand-alone target. We are asking that the Canadian government continue to be a champion for the prevention of violence against children in the intergovernmental negotiations at the United Nations and continue to call for targets on the prevention and elimination of violence, exploitation, and abuse against children.

We ask that the Canadian government continue its support for a target to end all harmful traditional practices, including child, early, and forced marriage and female genital mutilation or cutting, as well as for a target to achieve universal birth registration. We are asking the Canadian government to ensure that any target on the trafficking of children includes trafficking of girls and boys. Further, we ask the Canadian government to support the implementation of targets for the immediate elimination of all child labour by the year 2025.

To succeed in achieving the targets on the elimination of violence, abuse, and exploitation against boys and girls, more investment is needed. Specific areas of investment that will assist in the reduction of violence and exploitation should be a child protection system based on children’s rights, with measures to protect all children. It will be holistic, inclusive, sustainable, and well-coordinated.

We also require special teaching and learning methodologies, such as that which has been developed by the learning through play program developed by Hincks-Dellcrest Centre in Toronto, to make teachers, parents, and caregivers more responsive to the safety and security of all children and the special needs of vulnerable children.

We're asking that Canada’s contribution to a new global partnership continue to protect children from all violence, exploitation, and abuse.

We would like to express our gratitude for giving us the opportunity to appear this afternoon at the standing committee session. We warmly welcome this opportunity and would also like to thank the Government of Canada for its unyielding commitment to the prevention of violence against children everywhere.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lukowski.

Ms. Stevenson, it's my understanding that you're there to answer questions and that you don't have an opening statement.

Is that correct?

[Sarah Stevenson, United Nations Representative, ChildFund Alliance]

Yes, that's correct, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

We'll look forward to some of those questions then.

We're going to move over to Ms. Brown for seven minutes.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here. Mark, very nice to see you again. Thanks for the tour that I had of your facility in Markham. Thanks to all of you for the good work that you do.

All of you know that Canada has three priorities with our development dollars. One is food security, the second is children and youth, and the third is sustainable economic development. All of those have to work in tandem, I believe, in order for anything to be accomplished on any particular issue. Obviously this issue of child protection is one that we take very seriously.

Mark, you talked a little bit about some of the initiatives that we have championed. It was our former minister of foreign affairs who raised the issue of early and forced marriage a year ago. In fact, in 2013 we raised that issue at the United Nations General Assembly and continue to advocate to make sure that these things are addressed from the position of the United Nations.

We've said over and over again, in this next tranche of money that Canada has put forward for maternal, newborn, and child health, out of the $3.5 billion, how important it is that we see civil registrations as part of what happens in MNCH, because without legitimizing the existence of a child we have no way of protecting that child for the future.

With that as my lead-up, I do have a couple of questions that I'd like to pose. First of all, to our ladies from the YMCA, you talked about youth empowerment and about giving young people the tools for sustainable employment and being able to create a life for themselves. I wonder if you could just tell the committee a little bit about that education process that you have. What are the tools? Do you have any private sector engagement? We have a very robust program with WUSC, for instance. I met some of the interns in Malawi just a month ago. They are young Canadians who are working over there. But we also have programs with Barrick Gold in Burkina Faso, where young people are getting real employment tools that they can take into the workplace. Do you have any private sector engagement? Could you talk a little bit about those programs and how the kids are doing who are coming out of them?

[Mary Anne Roche]

Thank you.

Let me approach this question by describing the subject to citizen program of the Africa Alliance of the YMCA. I would describe it as both a philosophy regarding youth empowerment and a specific program with designated initiatives. The term "subject to citizen" reflects the goal of the Africa Alliance of the YMCA, which believes its mission is to empower young people to move forward toward an African renaissance, which is a way of talking about the renewal of Africa as designed by Africans themselves.

The challenge has been that the colonization process within Africa has often left young people feeling like they don't have a sense of agency. They have a mindset that sees themselves more as subjects to the conditions in which they exist. Poverty might contribute to that, as might a lack of jobs, and so on. The philosophy is that the work needs to begin with changing the mindset from that of being a subject to that of being a citizen, and a citizen being a young person who has a sense of agency, who believes that they can make a contribution to the community, that they can have a life of hope and contribution, education, jobs, and so on.

The specific initiatives within that fall into leadership development programming for young people, men and women, where they explore with each other through a peer-to-peer methodology and in those conversations with each other come to see and understand their context in some different ways. They also benefit from some adult partners who are working with them, positive role models. Some of the young people are working in communities where there have not been positive role models for leadership by adults, so there are leadership development initiatives.

There are economic initiatives. There is a whole range of initiatives trying to encourage entrepreneurship, financial savings, and so on, but within that economic portfolio is an interesting initiative, to speak to your point regarding the private sector. Generally speaking, I can say that the YMCA works with all development actors, so that includes the private sector. In this particular case, Rio Tinto approached the Madagascar YMCA regarding its youth work, and they have developed a partnership over a period of time where Rio Tinto is funding and providing support to the youth programming at the Madagascar YMCA, including job training and offering opportunities for young people. It's part of their business strategy or corporate responsibility strategy, so that's a concrete example.

Do young people get jobs out of those opportunities? In some cases, yes. In some cases, what they leave with is that sense of agency, hope and possibility, and feeling that they have the skills to move forward. Certainly in that particular example, there are various kinds of internships, I believe, with Rio Tinto.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I have a very short time.

Mark, you talked about a child protection system and making it holistic. I think you're looking for global buy-in on this. You know because of our conversation when I was in Markham that my daughter taught in Ghana last year. She was there with her husband, who is from Ghana. When she went in to sign her contract, the very first thing the headmaster handed to her was a cane. My daughter said, “I won't use it. I don't believe that's the best way to manage a classroom”, and he said, “Well, this is what we do.” We would consider that inappropriate in our school systems, but there is an acceptance in many cultures that this is a form of discipline.

How do we change that mindset? What do we do to change the mindset and to move cultures forward so that people who are in authority don't see this as an appropriate mechanism?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm sorry, we're going to have to answer that next time.