Minister Oda Unveils CIDA's Children and Youth Strategy (Transcript)

Today's generation of children and youth is the largest ever in history and it is forecasted to become a youth tsunami. Nearly half of the world's population of 3.4 billion people are under the age of 25 and 90 % of them live in the developing world, but when children are unable to reach their full potential.

Through CIDA, Canada has much to be proud of in what its support of children in developing countries around the world, particularly in the areas of health and education. Building on these successes and as part of our aid effectiveness agenda, our government has identified children and youth as one of Canada's top three thematic priorities in our international development work. We will focus on three paths of work to support children and youth in developing countries and the paths are child health and survival, including maternal health, access to quality education and safety and security of children and youth.

First, we want to improve the access that children and mothers have to basic health care, help move it closer to their homes, particularly in communities where they represent the majority of the population.

As we improve health care for infants and children, we must also recognize that more than one half million women worldwide die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth yearly; nearly all of them are in developing countries.

Under our new strategy, we will target effective programs that are targeted to meet the health care needs of mothers and children under the age of five, support mothers and ensure they are sufficiently healthy to deliver and care for their infants and children under the age of five and finally, programs that see major infectious diseases that primarily affect mothers and children that could be prevented and treated.

Consequently CIDA's second path under its child and youth strategy will be to provide access to quality basic education and learning opportunities with a particular focus on girls. Educating girls is one of the best investments a country can make. And so we must continue our work in educating girls.

Our new strategy in education will be focused on improving the quality of education through quality teacher training, the production and the distribution of culturally relevant textbooks and the development of appropriate curriculum.

Now let me turn to the third and final path under our children and youth strategy, ensuring the safety and security of children and youth. Nelson Mandela once said, "Safety and security don't just happen. They are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children the most vulnerable citizens in our society a life free of violence and fear."

I want to emphasize that in our work for children and youth, CIDA will seek projects and programs that are proven to be sustainable, build local capacity and support local ownership.

We encourage projects developed in collaboration with governments and local communities, particularly those that support national or local plans and frameworks or those that are integrated into national or regional poverty reduction strategies or into sectoral strategies.

As part of our accountability mandate, CIDA's supported projects must clearly identify what we expect to achieve in both quantitative and qualitative terms and CIDA will inform Canadians about these outcomes in our annual development for results reports.

We want the children living in poverty today to become resourceful, engaged and productive, ready to carry on the work of building a better future for the next generation.

It has been said that children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.