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01/04/08
Participants of Young Creators Contest take actions to prevent child abandonment
The 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is looking for Ukraine’s best young creative teams to compete for their country in the annual Young Lions Competition. To be chosen to represent Ukraine in Cannes, young advertising professionals need to first to create ideas for social print advertisement for EveryChild Ukraine project targeted at prevention of child abandonment.
The proposed by EveryChild Ukraine creative brief is focused on the problem of young mothers, who are forced to abandon their children. Social advertisement has to convince young mothers to consider their children as a chance to change their life for the better, rather than to perceive them as a source of unwanted problems. The experience of Chernigiv “Parent and baby Unit” will set an example to follow.
The best works will be the basis for print advertisements of an awareness campaign to be launched in the terms of “Prevention of Child Abandonment” project, financed by World Childhood Foundation, aimed at reducing by 2010 the number of children who grow up in children's homes by 30% or where there is a risk of their placement providing them with proper development in family environment.
This campaign will mainly be focused on the general public to stimulate changes in attitude and behaviours towards vulnerable parents, especially young single mothers by raising awareness about the reasons why families become vulnerable. It will also raise awareness about the new approaches and services that are being developed and provide practical information for those who may need them.
Additional Information:
Although there has been a significant increase in the number of prevention and reintegration cases of children from 0-3 years old, the overall number of children in baby homes remains consistently high. It is believed that the cause of this is that there are already many babies who have been left in maternity hospitals who are filling the spare places in the baby homes once they become available.
Maternity staff often have a discriminatory attitude towards single and young mothers, those with sexual diseases or HIV/AIDS, mothers who have no way of paying medical costs, mothers from vulnerable families with many children, and who may be abusing drugs or alcohol. In these cases the maternity staff can actively encourage mothers to leave their babies. This is particularly acute, if a child is born with a disability.
Over the last six years, EveryChild has worked in close cooperation with Kyiv Oblast State Administration. This has included the establishment of family support services across the oblast, the setting up of a Coordinating Council on Child Protection and the establishment of some of the first foster care placements in Ukraine. As a result of information and statistics compiled from a comprehensive monitoring system that has recently been developed by EveryChild Ukraine, it can be seen from statistics gathered in December 2006 that there has been a 50% reduction in number of children placed into institutions comparing to last 12 months in Kyiv Oblast as a result of our work.
The Young Lions competition (formerly known as the Young Creatives competition) is open to advertising professionals up to 28 years old. The participating teams, comprising an art director and copywriter, are selected through a pre-selection process in their own country, with the winners attending Cannes.
The competition, which has Print, Cyber and Film sections, takes place during the Festival week at the Palais des Festival, where the teams are briefed by a client to create and execute a campaign within 24 hours (with 48 hours for film).