Craig Kielburger awarded World Children's prize in Stockholm.

Craig Kielburger, International child rights activist and founder of Free The Children, received the 2006 World Children's Prize. The award was presented by Queen Silvia of Sweden at a prize ceremony in Stockholm.

The prize was conferred in recognition of Kielburger's leadership and development efforts through his youth-driven charity, Free The Children. The organization works to free children from poverty and exploitation by creating accessible education opportunities. Kielburger founded Free The Children in 1995 when he was 12-years-old. Since then Free The Children has built over 425 schools in 23 countries, providing education to 35,000 children everyday.

Established by the Swedish Children's World Association in 2000, the World Children's Prize is currently part of the world's largest annual education program about children's rights. Past recipients of the World Children's Prizes include Global Friends Award winners, Nelson Mandela and Graga Machel.

Kielburger was selected as the recipient of the award by an international child jury, consisting of former child soldiers, slaves, refugees and street children. Other finalists for the prize were Jetsum Pema, the Dalai Lama's sister and the Rwanda Orphans Organization, aiding children orphaned during the country's civil war in 1994: The prestigious award is accompanied by a $40,000 USD prize which will be used for the continuing work of Free The Children programming around the world.

www.childrensworld.org.

Of that total, $100 million has been earmarked over the next three years to give government the flexibility to respond to recommendations from the current external reviews.

Programs specifically targeted to children at risk include:

* New approaches to working with families, such as mediation and family group conferences;

* Additional resources for grandparents and other relatives looking after children under kith and kin agreements; and

* More social workers and other front-line staff to help vulnerable families and children and youth at risk.

In this fiscal year the government has allocated increased funds for children at risk, supports for caregivers, families and staffing; children and family services; and Child and Youth Mental Health Plan.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development has also initiated measures aimed at improving the speed and thoroughness with which case reviews are conducted--and to improve management information.

* Recruitment process is underway that will lead to additional staff in the regions and at headquarters to speed up the process of completing reviews and monitoring performance.

* clarifying policy around the types of reviews that are conducted and when and how they are conducted, how recommendations are developed and recording reasons when a review will not be conducted.

* Enhancing mentoring and training programs for specialized social workers to complete case reviews.

* Strengthening the way the ministry's work performance is monitored.

* Creating new framework for monitoring the progress of Child Death Reviews.

* Implementing a new management information system to track and share information relating to fatalities, critical incidents and recommendations.

* Reviewing standards to assess the readiness of any new agency to deliver child welfare services.

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