Create Hope and an Echo of Humanity for the Indigenous People

I will not do a retrospective of the year because if we were to use a Quebec thermostat to measure the mood of Canadians in 2015, the needle would have fluctuated in different directions until the last election on October 19, 2015.

Risk factors require that they be recognized and dealt with

A few months ago, I heard a First Nations woman say how happy she was that she had had a child, a beautiful healthy girl. But her next sentence literally froze me to the bone. She said: “I started fearing for my girl because she was a girl”.

Increased awareness regarding the safety and support of women and children

Although there is increased awareness regarding the safety and support of women and children affected by domestic violence, resource constraints create a challenging context for the delivery of effective services and real justice to women and children. In a previous work experience, the department assuring support to the community had one full-time person and one occasional additional person for just so many months a year. The community workers were there to translate and negotiate which made for an inordinate amount of work distributed amongst the agents. It was impossible to ever get it all done.

First Nations and Inuit children are made more vulnerable by the impact of many placements

The welfare of children is a responsibility shared by the entire society, but because of their vulnerability and dependence, some children suffer from poverty, abuse, injustice and inequality of access to protection.

Domestic Violence has Devastating Effects on the Children and Their Future

"We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable" (Unknown author)

My presence at Amnisty International in May 2015 and then my participation at the World’s March for Women October 4th 2015 to honour the missing and assassinated indigenous women has convinced me that it is impossible to dissociate mothers from the children in the project No Child Should Have to Take the Long Way Home.

Taking care of communities for the well-being of the children

In Quebec, on average, 70% of Indigenous and Inuit households derive their income from social assistance. Canada is 78th in industrialized countries if we let statistics speak on the poverty of Indigenous and Inuit people. One in four children lives in poverty among Aboriginal and Inuit.

The children disappear behind the numbers and their poverty is concealed behind statistics that reflect a general improvement of the situation, but completely obliterate the disparities in our society.

No Child Should Take the Long Way Home is a grassroots initiative to help children in need of loving care, of a protective and stable environment to meet their basic needs for protection, shelter, and education.