The Formentera Council's social welfare department and bureau of child and youth services has drafted its second “strategic plan” for children and youth. The product not only of collaboration between various Council offices but also participation from youth, local associations and island groups that work with youngsters, the strategy will be put to a vote at the Formentera Council's September plenary assembly.
Social welfare secretary Vanessa Parellada sees the new plan as “a tool to guide us in planning for children and young people” and says it creates “fixed terms of participation”. Parellada also highlighted Formentera's commitment to “defending and recognising the rights of the child as well as human rights” and described the administration's mission as “giving young people everything they need to become wholly developed human beings”.
The strategy stems from the findings of a school board-commissioned study by Fundació Pere Tarrés and identifies eight action areas (Relationships, values and coexisting on Formentera; Education; Transition to employment; Housing; Participation; Fitness, leisure and culture; Health and Mobility) as well as 48 specific proposals to be developed.
In its wider bid to guarantee the promotion and protection of the rights of Formentera's children, the Council hopes to consolidate and define the terms of local youth policies in tune with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The CRC's foundational premise is to treat children and teens not as objects in need of protection, but as rights-holding agents in their own destiny.
Rollout
The development phase will extend from 2018 to 2022 and one-, two-, three- and four-year action deadlines will be assigned for individual proposals.
The plan's engineers envision yearly reviews as a source of assessment and reflection in order for specific proposals to be carried forward or modified as needed.
The Formentera Council salutes the participation of wide cross-sections of the local community and the engagement of each actor involved. In Parellada's words, “we all feel like this thing is our baby”.
Formentera Council chief Jaume Ferrer sat down today with the director of the Sant Francesc branch of CaixaBank to sign a deal that reaffirmed the two groups' promotion of active ageing and formalised plans to develop a programme in support of the elderly at three local senior centres.
This week marks the last that applications will be accepted by young aspirants of a work practice programme, SOIB Jove Qualificats, that provides local administrations and associated groups a means to source their employment needs. Applicants must be:
Islanders at Formentera's dependent care facility, or centre de dia, are teaming up this week with members of environmental group Que Celeste to repurpose some of the found objects that surfaced during the group's coastal cleanups at ses Illetes, es Carnatge and es Ram.
Nine individuals receiving care at the island's dependent care facility, together with three monitors and a host of personnel from Formentera Divers, headed to the sea today to get a closeup look at meadows of posidonia sea grass.
