Identifying the Benefits of a Child-Friendly City Map

For your first activity for the course, we had you read the GUB Child-Friendly City Map Report. Now, you are going to begin to fill out your own guiding documents that draw from our experiences, some of the findings we identified in that report and in the building of our CFC map. 

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Benefits of a Child-Friendly Map

There are numerous benefits to having a CFC map in your city. As you might expect, each stakeholder group (youth, caregivers, city staff, non-profit organizations) will view the benefits with a slightly different lens. We’ve listed the SOME of the benefits from our view below. 

Benefits to having a CFC map in your city:

1. Supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• • SDG #3: Good Health and Well-Being
  • SDG #10 Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG #11: Sustainable Cities & Communities
  • SDG #13: Climate Action

2. Serves as a CFC assessment and engagement tool

• • Asset and barrier mapping
  • Change agent
  • Tool for outreach and engagement
  • Ongoing, living document reflecting the city

3. Raises awareness about child-friendly cities and GUB’s Child-Friendly City Initiative

• • Introduce CFCI to new organizational partners as an appealing and inter-departmental city structure that serves to support children, youth and families
  • CFC map generates positive media coverage for the city and inter/national academic interest
  • Engages parents and caregivers

4. Provides fundraising opportunities  

• • Non-profit and city partnerships
  • Kick-off and other events
  • Revenue generator with each map iteration

5. Serves as an educational tool

• • In classrooms where students are learning mapping skills and concepts related to transportation, social studies and civics, the map provides a meaningful means to an end

6. Encourages children, youth and their families to engage, get to know and access their city!

• • Loved by local and visiting families alike

7. Enacts and embodies the rights of children outlined by the United Nations 

• • See this PDF for a child-friend guide to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
  • The CFC map particularly enacts the following rights:
    • Access to information 
    • Respect for children’s views 
    • Access to rest, play, culture and the arts 

Challenges of a Child-Friendly Map

Like benefits, there may be challenges that present themselves in creating a child-friendly city map for your city. Children and families living in a large city may experience the city in terms of neighborhoods. In this case, you may decide that you want to begin with certain neighborhoods. Where safety is a concern, you may wish to provide safety tips for children and families. In this case, we recommend that you create the safety tips with local children and families, and take note that safety feels different to different groups. Whatever the challenges, we are confident that by asking young caregivers and their families, that you will co-create something meaningful, beneficial and highly useable. 

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Benefits of a Child-Friendly Map for YOUR City

Now that you have read through the benefits we identified, it is your turn to begin to name the benefits of a CFC map for your city.

1. Your first step is to go to the Your Templates folder on Google Drive and ensure that you have saved a copy of all of the documents within to your own Google Drive folder.
2. Once you have, open the document entitled 1.4 CFC Map Guiding Document. 
3. In this document, we have included the benefits that we identified of the CFC map in Boulder. These are included in green. We have also included instructions for how to make this document relevant for your city in yellow. We advise that you delete the yellow highlighted information and remove and replace the green highlighting as you personalize your document. 
4. Go through the document and fill out the sections entitled Map Goals and Outcomes and Map Benefits. 
5. Congratulations! You have just begun work on your Child Friendly Map Guiding Document!