Poverty Petition

Poverty Petition

November 13, 2012

Dear colleague,

November is End Child Poverty month in the Year of Provincial Action.

Join your colleagues and wear an End Child Poverty band-aid sticker during the week of November 19–23. We will also be collecting signatures on a petition to be presented to local mayors. The petition and stickers will be available from your local association and staff representative.

The Petition:

“We the undersigned, call on provincial and municipal governments to work together to launch a comprehensive and accountable poverty-reduction plan with targets and timelines aimed at eliminating child poverty in our province. A child’s performance in school is strongly related to socio-economic status. A strong education is often the only means of breaking the cycle of poverty for poor children.”

Please help get the message out. Show that kids matter, and teachers do care. Through these actions we are speaking up for our most vulnerable students.

Why act now?

• Too many BC kids, an estimated 137,000, are growing up in poverty and it’s harming their education. That’s 16.4 % of BC kids.
• BC’s child-poverty rate has been the worst in Canada for most of the last eight years.
• BC has no comprehensive antipoverty plan, unlike most other provinces.
• Public support is growing. A strong teacher voice, advocating in our communities, can make the difference in convincing all levels of government to work together to launch a comprehensive and accountable child poverty reduction plan.

You may also want to contact your MLA or declared candidates to push for a poverty-reduction plan.

Find out more at www.BetterSchoolsBC.ca and www.bctf.ca.

Petition can be accessed on the bctf.ca homepage.

Susan Lambert
President