Great. Thank you so much.
Honourable members, fellow presenters, and parliamentary staff, thank you so much for welcoming us today. On behalf of the Children and Youth in Challenging Contexts Network, we'd like to highlight the particular challenges faced by vulnerable young women in Canada with regard to facing violence, cyber-violence, and supporting their mental health, and also illustrate the realities faced by informal community-based services that are often on the front lines of providing services to marginalized young women.
With regard to the CYCC Network, we're a knowledge mobilization network funded through the federal government through the Networks of Centres of Excellence. We're based at Dalhousie University in Halifax. We focus on finding the best practices to support the mental health and well-being of the most vulnerable young people. We connect researchers, service providers, policy officials, and young people themselves in conversations about what works, and we promote the increased use of evidence and evaluation in the sector.
We are concerned about young people who have complex needs that span multiple service providers, such as special education, mental health services, juvenile detention, child welfare, and others. We have had a particular focus on girls and boys, young women and men who have been exposed to violence or who perpetuate violence. We approach our work with a strong commitment to youth engagement as a philosophy, a principle, and a series of concrete actions. We also seek to support the positive uses of technology in young people's lives.
I'd like to start by highlighting a few of the promising practices we consider important for the discussion today. When we looked at the mental health help-seeking behaviour of vulnerable young people, we recognized the role of stigma and self-stigma that often prevents young people from seeking mental health help. Young women experiencing cyber-violence would be at risk for increased feelings of stigma because of the pressure to be active online, as well as the disconnect from this youth reality and—