National Child Day celebrates the importance of raising healthy and happy children and youth, which is something us at Kids Up Front Edmonton prioritizes each and every day. Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states children have the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
Kids Up Front’s mission is to provide deserving children with fun-filled opportunities that bring joy, promote inclusion, and strengthen communities. We break down barriers for communities to access fun, recreation, culture, arts, and sports.
This year, on the theme of “Inclusion for Every Child”, we wanted to do something special. We shared with our network of 125 child, youth, and family serving agencies that we would rent out a movie theatre on November 20th in celebration of National Child Day. This inclusive space ensures that there are no barriers to cost to spend the evening resting, relaxing, and engaging in a family-filled evening celebrating their rights and showing them that they deserve to be included in their community!
This National Child Day, we will host 119 individuals from 17 different agencies – each coming from unique backgrounds and communities together to celebrate! No matter where they live, the colour of their skin, their abilities, their religion, language, or gender, they are all welcome in this space together. Each individual has a unique background and story that brought them to this theatre.
We believe this feeling of inclusion and fun is important every day – which is why to date this year we have provided over 15,000 opportunities to over 100 different agencies in a variety of different spaces. We love that we get to hear so many different stories and how we get to help people feel like they belong. Inclusion is so important for children’s self-esteem, emotional resilience, social development, and even their cognitive growth. We are so honoured to have a small part in building inclusion for all in Edmonton.
We are so grateful for the space to recognize National Child Day and all the other partners who commit to acknowledging and fulfilling the Rights of the Child every day. As all 54 articles work in harmony, we hope to continue to work with and learn from groups in the community to uphold these rights.
Kid’s Up-Front Edmonton