Five is adjourned at 9.26 a.m.

Mayor, would you like to convene the work session?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Good morning.

This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, April 28th, 2025.

It is 926 a.m.

Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in Council Chambers, along with Mayor Pro Tem Chavez, Representative Acevedo, Representative Madonna de Rocha, Representative Boyotrejo, Representative Nino, alternate Mayor Pro Tem Pietro, Representative Limon, and Representative Canales.

The first item on the agenda is presentation discussion and action to approve a resolution of the City Council of the City of Al Paso, Texas, pursuing designation as a United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF Child Friendly City and authorizing city staff to initiate the formal application process in partnership with UNICEF.

Good morning.

Good morning, Richard Bristol from the City Manager's Office.

And before I jump into the presentation, I wanted to uh tie a few things together and explain what we're doing here for clarity's sake.

We are seeking the uh designation of child friendly city through UNICEF.

And the reason we're doing so is one, it's part of our strategic plan.

Um that's the the one of the primary reasons.

Another one is we have over 360 services that are focused on providing services to children.

So we are already are already deeply invested in this process.

Um back in December 2019, we created a youth advisory board through this council, and what we're going to do that youth advisory board was established for the purpose of advising the city of El Paso on matters related to young people.

We're going to take that board and we're going to move it over with this UNICEF effort that we're working towards the Child Friendly Cities Initiative because it's part of the criteria and we already had it in place.

So there's another feather to our cap that sets us up quite uh quite nicely to qualify for the program, which we're in the process of attempting to do.

Um we have had the uh youth advisory board in existence for a couple of years.

I just want to touch on what happened with it.

Um it was started in 2019, they did many programs throughout the year uh focusing on participatory government.

They were very involved in our budget process.

There were many workshops where they work with OMB and Mr.

Cortines and the financial staff.

They even presented in front of council um during the budget process.

Um but now we're going to take this to a different level and we're gonna try something new that we have not done before, and we're gonna go after this child friendly cities initiative.

Uh it's a great fit for the city of El Paso, and it's something that we really want to do.

Um with that, um, we will reactivate the youth advisory board.

We'll put it back into service as part of this initiative.

And I'm gonna touch on a presentation real quick that describes what this child friendly cities initiative is, and then after that, we're gonna ask you to approve a resolution that reinforces our support of it.

So if I could get started on this, I want to thank the performance office for putting this presentation together.

Um the Child Friendly Cities Initiative was launched in 1996 by UNICEF and the UN Habitat.

It's a global-wide program.

Uh it empowers local governments and stakeholders in this situation.

The stakeholders are children, um, to have a voice in their government.

It builds environments where children have voices, their needs and their rights are prioritized and they're integrated into public policy through a governmental structure.

Um the child friendly sees uh initiative vision is that every child and young person enjoys their childhood and youth.

Their vision is that every child and young person enjoys their childhood and reaches their full potential through equal realization of rights within their cities and communities.

Um this initiative is structured around five outcome goals.

One, every child is respected, valued, and treated fairly.

Two, every child has a voice and is heard in public decisions.

That's what we have our board.

Every child will have access to quality essential services.

As mentioned, we have 360 of them uh for services uh for children right now.

That every child lives in a safe and clean environment, and every child enjoys family life, play, and leisure.

Um the framework was grounded in the convention of the rights of a child, and it was linked to the sustainable uh development goals for this program.

So this is like an overview of the process.

We're getting ready to enter into the first part of this.

A lot of work has been done to prepare the memorandum of understanding.

Our steering committee, Paraninos is here with us.

And in a few moments, I'm gonna ask Leah Henani and Mr.

Jack Lovridge if they'd like to make a few points about their efforts with the UNICEF uh steering committee for this effort.

But what will happen is they're preparing the memorandum of understanding.

Um we're gonna have a child rights situation analysis.

We're gonna see where we're at and evaluate and see where we're at.

Then we're gonna develop a plan.

We're gonna implement that plan, we're gonna monitor it, and we're hoping that this will give us towards uh the recognition for the child friendly cities designation and to kind of um point out the minimum criteria to be a child-friendly city.

Um you got to be designated results for children across multiple child-friendly city initiative goal areas.