One per cent of our children and youth in Canada are in the provincial child care system, yet system kids, as they are called, account for as many as 65 per cent of the people living on our streets.

Foster children often leave the system inadequately prepared to become contributing members of our communities. Only 21 per cent of system kids graduate from high school, compared to 80 per cent of other Canadian youth. Many foster children end up on the street or on welfare. Our communities are dealing with a steady flow of marginalized, homeless youth where they often become involved in drugs and crime.

People who live on the street consume a disproportionate amount of our community resources. There are hundreds of agencies and programs managing homelessness, yet the costs of dealing with homelessness continue to grow every year.

communitychildren.ca is a managed, open-source communication centre that:

• Provides those caring for marginalized children with ideas and information about resources to help children discover who they are and explore their interests, abilities, and talents.
• Gives people the ability to share ideas about what is working, and engages the community, businesses, business associations, community groups, service clubs, foundations, and governments in online conversations about how we can create more resources.
• Provides marginalized children with opportunities to use the resources during their time in the child care system and after they leave it, and assists those caring for marginalized children in connecting their children with the specific community resources they need.
• Tells the stories of the people, community organizations, and businesses who are co-creating communitychildren.ca by providing resources and who are helping our marginalized children.
• Operates with complete transparency.

Click here for the Community Children Story