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Home > Who We Are > Public Awareness and Education


Who We Are
Our Work : Public Awareness and Education

Our public awareness and public education efforts focus on translating the latest scientific knowledge and practice into materials and messages that are relevant, practical and compelling for all those who touch the lives of Canada's youngest.

Comfort, Play & Teach Campaign

Beginning in September 2003, Invest in Kids will run a national advertising campaign, showing some of the easy ways you can enhance your child’s development by comforting, playing with and teaching them every day. The pro bono campaign was developed by Grey Worldwide and, with the generosity of media partners Viacom Outdoor Canada and Pattison Outdoor, Division of Jim Pattison Industries, will run in transit shelters, subway platform boards and subway car cards in Toronto, Kitchener, London, Windsor, Barrie, Ottawa, Brampton, Hamilton, Oakville, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria and Vancouver.

How we care for our children in their early years has a profound effect on their ability to learn, create, love, trust, and communicate.

Invest in Kids has many useful, practical parenting ideas from the Comfort, Play & Teach: A Positive Approach to ParentingTM initiative that helps make daily family activities an opportunity to enhance your child’s social, emotional or intellectual development.

Click here to learn about the simple, small things you can do everyday to make the most of your child’s early years.

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Get Set For Life

Get Set For Life is a national public education campaign created by CBC Television, Invest in Kids, Canadian Living and Coup de pouce magazines, in collaboration with Health Canada. Get Set For Life is generously supported by the Lipton and Sunlight brands.

With the help of the animated Zap family, Get Set For Life brings you Comfort, Play & Teach: A Positive Approach to Parenting™ - the latest in child development research translated for you into useful, friendly, everyday parenting ideas, developed by the experts at Invest in Kids.

You can check out Get Set For Life: on CBC, Monday to Saturday mornings with co-hosts Alyson and Michael and the animated Zap Family; in Canadian Living and Coup de pouce magazines through monthly columns with helpful parenting tips; on the web by visiting www.getsetforlife.ca to find out lots of useful information about parenting issues and more on Comfort, Play & Teach.

Get Set for Life Welcome to Parenting Box

Invest in Kids and Unilever Canada Foundation have partnered to develop a new parenting resource: the Get Set for Life Welcome to Parenting Box. The Box contains a range of resources with a focus on practical, easy-to-understand materials parents can use to encourage their child’s social, emotional and intellectual development.

The Box is themed around Comfort, Play and Teach: A Positive Approach to Parenting™.

Produced in both English and French versions, the Box includes:

  • Welcome to Parenting: Comfort, Play and Teach: A Positive Approach to Parenting™ - The Amazing World of Your Baby: Birth to 18 months guidebook.
  • A Galaxy Whoozit® with Comfort, Play & Teach examples.
  • Listings of national and local community resources.
  • Parenting with the Zap Family video and guidebook.
  • A Get Set for Life on CBC infant bib.
  • Product samples and coupons.

Close to 10,000 Boxes have been distributed, free of charge, to Canadian parents of newborns most in need of parenting support. Home visiting professionals or para-professionals working in a wide range of programs across Canada have been delivering the Boxes to families they serve. For more information, please click here.

Parent Help Line

In collaboration with Kids Help Phone, this national, toll free, confidential and anonymous telephone and website service, in both English and French, gives Canadians a place to turn for help with their parenting concerns and questions. Through live counsellors and a library of over 250 recorded messages developed by the Invest in Kids experts, Parent Help Line provides information, counselling, referrals and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In 2001, Parent Help Line counsellors answered over 17,000 calls, and 8,300 people phoned into their message library (1-888-603-9100). The Parent Help Line website (www.parenthelpline.ca) has had over 74,000 visitors since launch.

Years Before 5 Campaign

Launched in 1999, this public awareness campaign inspired Canadians about the importance of the early years and the role each of us plays in ensuring the future well being of our youngest children. On television and transit shelters, in magazines, subways and buses across Ontario, this award-winning campaign carried the simple but compelling message, "the years before five last the rest of their lives."

You can purchase the compelling campaign posters at our store.

"Years Before Five" Resource Kit

This kit is a vibrant, 24-page tablet created by Invest in Kids filled with information and recommendations from our experts about how we can all give children the best start in life. To date, 400,000 kits have been distributed to individuals and organizations across Canada, including 250,000 kits to Ontario Health Units to be distributed to parents of newborns through Ontario's "Healthy Babies, Healthy Children" program.

Invest in Kids has also designed a complete presentation package for professionals working with parents to accompany the "Years Before Five" Parent Resource Kit. Our "Ready To Go" Parent Education Package includes coloured overheads and presentation speaking notes that outline the importance of the early years, a summary of infant, toddler and preschooler characteristics, details on how to encourage development at different ages and stages and ten "Years Before Five" Resource Kits.

Click here to order a free copy of our Resource Kit, or purchase a quantity of these kits or the "Ready To Go" Parent Education Package.

Early Years Campaign

In March 2002, Invest in Kids partnered with the Early Years Project Toronto and the Toronto Public Health Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program to create the Early Years public awareness campaign. This campaign is designed to educate the public, health care professionals and various organizations across Toronto about the lasting impact of the years before age six. And the need to "comfort them now, play with now and teach them now."

Invest in Kids on TVO's Planet Parent

Invest in Kids has partnered with the provincial educational broadcaster TVO to present Parent Matters. These new short programs address important topics for parents on everything from how to dress a fussy toddler to how to talk to a child about death, with tips from Invest in Kids experts and parents dealing with the issue.

The material for these 10 educational shorts have been edited from the current season of TVO's Planet Parent, an innovative weekly, half-hour television series aimed at helping Ontario's parents navigate the often murky and choppy waters of a child's first 12 years. Invest in Kids experts are featured in the "how to" segments of the series. For more information on Planet Parent, visit www.planetpare nt.tv.

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