Child Poverty Action Network
On the 20th November 1989, the UN convention for the Rights of the Child was signed by the Canadian government. Four days later, on the 24th of November, a unanimous resolution was passed in the House of Commons to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000.
The year 2000 came and a report was generated showing that the child poverty rate had risen from 15.3% to 25% (or more). Because of the effects that poverty had on our local children, three community leaders (Greg Lubimiv, Felicite Stairs, and Joanne King) got together and created Renfrew County Child Poverty Action Network (CPAN) with the mandate to eliminate the effects of child poverty and to do so in a manner that was empowering and inclusive. We purposely want to focus on the word ACTION so that we do not have a group that only talks about child poverty, but rather has activities and actions that do something about it.
The network grew and was formalized in 2005. Currently, the network has over 600 kind and caring community members and we partner with 62 organizations in order to help hundreds of local children in need annually. CPAN is not government funded and relies totally on grants, fundraisers, and donations (of money, skills, and time).