Waterloo Region

Challenge Statement

We will become the benchmark community in Canada for child and youth wellbeing by using early intervention, youth engagement and a connected-community framework to create adaptive, data-driven programs and scalable learning technologies that improve early child development, mental health and high school graduation rates.

Summary

We have selected Healthy Children and Youth as our smart cities challenge area. Based on data and community consultation, we have identified six priority areas of focus that will address through our smart cities initiative: early child development; mental health; bullying; literacy rates; high school graduation rates; and youth sense of belonging. Working with our local youth and community partners from the private, not-for-profit, educational and government sectors, we will develop connected community spaces, broader education platforms and technology-based programming that supports equity, mentorship, volunteering, mental health, food security and nutrition and STEAM learning.

In partnership with UNICEF Canada and their One Youth Initiative, we will build Canada’s first real-time child and youth wellbeing dashboard. Using a community-based data platform that connects data from multiple organizations, we will create a framework that measures child and youth wellbeing in Waterloo Region against UNICEF’s Canada’s Child and Youth Wellbeing Index. Together, we will work with UNICEF Canada to scale this framework to communities of all sizes across the country helping to make Canada the number one country in the world for child and youth wellbeing over the next decade.

next decade.