Leading from the front issuu

CHILD FRIENDLY CITIES PROJECT
by mark cleary, pilot city trust chair
Once Pat become aware of the UNICEF Child Friendly
Initiative he was in boots and all, recognising that Napier
was the ideal place to adopt this. The Child Friendly Cities
Initiative (CFCI) is a UNICEF-led initiative (launched
in 1996) that supports municipal governments in realizing
the rights of children at the local level using the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child as its foundation.
Pat immediately got hold of the local head of the Ministry
of Education Roy Sye, a former school principal and
Napier City Councillor and gained his support to get
Napier to become part of the Child Friendly City Initiative.
Roy suggested that Pat visit all the local schools
and gain their support.
Within weeks Pat had visited all the Napier schools
and received verbal support and interest from each for
the Initiative.
In 2019 The Napier Pilot City Trust decided that it
would make the goal of Napier as a Child Friendly City
a key part of its vision of a kinder and fairer Napier and
held the first Napier Pilot City Trust Child Friendly Forum.
This was successful, and the event was repeated in 2020.
The 2019 forum deliberately aligned international
(UNICEF Child Friendly Initiative), national (Child
and Youth Wellbeing Strategy) and regional (Matariki
Hawke’s Bay Regional Economic Development Strategy)
actions to demonstrate that Napier as a Child Friendly
City was logical and had support at all levels. At the
2019 forum, newly elected Mayor Kirsten Wise gave her
strong support for the initiative and announced that
Councillor Richard McGrath would hold a special Child
Friendly portfolio. Pat’s vision appeared to be coming
closer.
The 2019 forum allowed tamariki from Maraenui Bilingual
School to share their thoughts with participants;
their message was powerful and demonstrated clearly
that the voice of our children must be central to any
strategy or initiative. This resulted in the focus of the
2020 forum being on the voice of tamariki and we were
thrilled that four other schools participated and shared
their powerful messages. The Tamatea Intermediate
School group were subsequently asked to share their
presentation and video to a full Napier City Council
meeting the next month.
While at the time of writing Napier City hasn’t adopted
the Child Friendly City Initiative, they are active in supporting
the regionalisation of the Government Child and
Youth Wellbeing Strategy and are very keen that Napier
develops its own unique Child Friendly Strategy. The
Trust is very keen to work alongside the Council with
this.
Napier Pilot City Trust – for a kinder, fairer city 143