On May 5th, the EU Alliance for Investing in Children published a new working paper highlighting the most relevant and upcoming activities in child poverty and child well-being issues. Eurodiaconia is a member of the EU Alliance and has contributed to the information presented in the document. The paper, which is titled, “Working Paper on the Mapping of Activities and Priorities on child poverty and child well being”, shows the results of a survey on child well being conducted in February 2014 among 17 different organizations, including Eurodiaconia. The answers given by the organization show what has been done recently to help counter problems in child poverty/child well-being, but it also reports on what steps still need to be taken to “reduce child poverty and promote child well-being” across all of Europe.
The Working Paper presents three pillars the EU Alliance recommends organizations to follow when combating challenges in this area. From the survey conducted, the results show that most organizations that are working in this area are focused on Pillar 2: Access to affordable quality services. Pillar 2’s activities include trying to provide housing, healthcare services, and education to all children.
The paper also highlights the fact that most of the activities done to aid children are focused on groups of children who are often discriminated against including: migrant children, Roma, children with disabilities or children in alternative homes/care. Furthermore, the Alliance emphasizes that work done to aid child poverty needs to be continually linked with the EU2020 priorities in order to gain access to important EU funds. By aligning both the EU2020 priorities and the priorities of child-aiding organizations, gaining access to EU funds for social inclusion will become more probable. These funds may allow organizations to carry out new and interesting projects to better help child poverty issues in their specific region.
To see the working paper in its entirety please visit: http://www.alliance4investinginchildren.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/EU-Alliance-IiC_Mapping-of-Activities-and-priorities-Report_Working-Pape….pdf