FBCYICN – Federation of BC Youth in Care Networks

**UPDATE: CCAY funding has been reinstated! This means that funds for Aboriginal youth programs will be available again. Thank you to everyone who joined together and used their voice to resist this devastating decision.**

http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1343665302003

Also, we received a response to one of our letters–from BC Premier Christy Clark. Check it out here!

Hey members, allies and world:

We at the Fed have been writing to relevant government officials in solidarity with the national movement against recent national CCAY (Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth) $22 million cuts to Aboriginal youth programming, and we wanted to share with you the letter-templates we used. These letters (below) were created by BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres and pulled together/passed to us by the Federation of Community Social Services of BC. We are passing them on so that you or an organization you are affiliated with could use these to write your own letters to the Prime Minister, the Premier, and the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, asking them to reverse this decision. Feel free to share widely!

Please make sure to copy and paste the content from these letters into your own word document and use your own letterhead (if you are affiliated with an organization) and change the info to reflect YOU (otherwise it sounds like it’s coming from FCSS). You can use as much or as little of the content as you like, and change it around. The more people they hear from, the better!  Youth, if you would like help with this, contact Lisa Mickleborough: powerpages@fbcyicn.ca

Click here for PM letter template.

Click here for the Premier letter template.

Click here for the Minister letter template.

For more info about CCAY, the cuts, and what this means for our Aboriginal young people and our communities, start by checking out the following news release from the Association of Aborigianl Friendship Centres here or view this story in the  Vancouver Sun:  http://www.vancouversun.com/Federal+cuts+aboriginal+youth+programs+hard/6830436/story.html

We as an organization are appalled that cuts to vital Aboriginal programming are happening at all, let alone after the federal government made promises to support vulnerable aboriginal youth in the 2012-2013 budget, and particularly when the cuts are retroactive (meaning the cuts were announced on June 11th, but are effective April 1, 2012–in other words, after affected organizations had made their plans and budgets based on this funding, it was pulled away.) Programs are shutting down as we speak and opportunities youth had been promised are being taken away.

Join us in the national movement  and say no to CCAY cuts!