The governor of the province of Santa Fe, Omar Perotti, and the UNICEF representative in Argentina, Luisa Brumana, presented this Friday the award of “Municipality Committed to Children and Adolescents” to the cities of Santa Fe, Rafaela, Rosario, One-Eyed Deer, Reconquista, Vera and Toasted. With this, the will of the municipalities to implement an action plan for the protection of children, backed by a municipal ordinance, is recognized.
In the activity that took place in the White Room of the Government House in the city of Santa Fe, Perotti thanked Unicef for “having trusted that Santa Fe had to be one of the provinces to be part of this program for the quality and work that each of the mayors, mayors and their teams put into this commitment. The satisfaction of seeing that behind this there has been dedication, commitment and teams formed in the territory. That is fundamental, closeness cannot be replaced ”.
“The municipalities will have an important role, which is to be transmitters of this first experience to which they have agreed to add others and form more teams. Multiplying the actions in our territory is the greatest guarantee of being able to have a much more effective action with our childhoods and with our adolescence”, added Perotti.
“Comprehensiveness is fundamental and also being able to address it together, but understanding and the possibility of what you marked with great success is fundamental, having the work ordered, having the capacity for action protocolized,” the governor concluded.
Reaching the recognition of Candidate Municipality, implies that intersectoral Executing Units were formed; they prepared self-diagnostics of the situation of children and adolescents at the local level; they prioritized the themes that will be addressed in the Action Plan; they received technical support from Unicef to prepare Action Plans with annual objectives and goals; and the mayors promised to comply with these action plans.
With financing from Unicef, it implied a transfer to the province for $5,616,642 to guarantee support to the Municipalities.
WORK RECOGNITION
For her part, the representative of Unicef in Argentina, Luisa Brumana, congratulated “the seven municipalities of this first batch that will receive the first distinction, the recognition of the work, the effort that has been made up to now, I think that here in the province of Santa Faith there is less need to explain the route, why, what we are for”.
“MUNA is an initiative within the framework of our cooperation cycle in Argentina for the 2021-25 period that has five main objectives: the reduction of poverty and territorial inequalities, the promotion of the integral development of girls and boys from 0 to 6 years to early childhood, the generation of equitable opportunities for adolescents, guaranteeing environments free of violence, and protection and access to justice for the victim, and finally expanding the commitment of society as a whole for the promotion of right of children and adolescents”.
“So – he continued – returning to this context, in Santa Fe we signed the cooperation framework agreement with the government of the province, and from then on we have been working together on all the priorities, with a coordinated plan with the Ministry of Government. Today we are convinced that to reverse the situation, the commitment of local governments is essential because you are the ones who know the situation and have the possibility of articulating from the territory the public interventions required to respond to the problem”, concluded Brumana.
On the other hand, the Minister of Government, Justice and Human Rights, Celia Arena, recalled that “in May 2022 the first meeting was held with all the municipalities that are part of this stage of MUNA, and the truth is that today having this meeting It is a very great incentive in these actions that we carry out and that we work so hard with a vocation, of which the governor always speaks, of a very crucial presence of the territories, of the local governments and of the construction of capacities in each one of them articulated, no less than with Unicef”.
Meanwhile, the Secretary for Regional Cooperation and Integration, Julieta De San Felix, stressed that “it is a job of great coordination between the different levels of government, with the local and provincial government, and also with the support of Unicef, but it also involved the participation of different actors, be they from civil society, and legislators”.
In this sense, he stressed that “this agreement that we signed with Unicef, was sanctioned by law in the provincial Legislature, which implies that the work we started will have sustainability and continuity over time. This speaks to us of leaving capacities installed in the province, in the different actors of the public sector, but also in the private sector, in order to guarantee their commitment to children,” the secretary concluded.
TAKE FIRMLY THE PROBLEM
On the other hand, the mayor of Vera, Paula Mitre, said she felt “honored to be part of this wonderful project. I want to thank our governor Omar Perotti for having thought of Vera and for having involved us in this project. We know that if we were added it is because of our reality related to childhood, but being able to participate and commit ourselves in these years to carry out the action plan, will allow us to be better off and firmly take on the problem of children in our city”.
In his turn, the mayor of Rafaela, Luis Castellano, expressed that “as Rafaela we are honored to be in Unicef’s MUNA program, because the issue of poverty is one of the most important problems facing us in Argentina, and violence It has a lot to do with poverty. We decided to take up the issue of violence and that is why we have been working in a coordinated manner in an Executing Unit that links 250 institutions interested in working on violence against children and adolescents”.
On the other hand, the mayor of Santa Fe, Emilio Jatón, stressed that “it is a pleasant moment because the synergy of the joint work of the provincial government, MUNA and the municipalities is noticeable. If there is something that encompasses us all, it is commitment. We are committed to life and people. Strengthening early childhood for us is key. We have 17 kindergartens, because from the kindergartens we are annexing what we call stations, which are municipal devices where the State is there”.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Tostado, Enrique Mualem, pointed out that “I want to thank the governor for taking us into account in the program, Unicef for starting to work after the signing of this agreement, and the municipal team that has been working pair”.
For his part, the mayor of Reconquista, Amadeo Vallejos, highlighted that “these programs focus joint efforts but the reality is that they cross us in each of the localities, making the effort that we have to make is immense and these programs enable us to articulate more on specific topics”.
Finally, the Undersecretary of Human Development of the Municipality of Rosario, Lucas Raspall, indicated that “the process with this program is very rich because it helps a large municipality, with a long history also in public policies, to focus and prioritize programs , develop new programs, and strengthen others. That’s where we are. Unicef makes us raise the bar permanently, which is enormously helpful to have this accompaniment”.
