Recently, the General Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Office of the Women and Children Working Commission of the State Council, and the General Office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development jointly issued the "List of the Third Batch of National Child-friendly Cities", wherein Deyang was successfully selected.
After the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan on May 12, 2008, UNICEF's "Child-friendly Home" project was launched in Deyang. Since then, the concept of "children first" has taken root in the city and gradually become its development strategy contributing to children's cause. In recent years, the CPC Deyang Municipal Committee and municipal government have attached great importance to the construction of a child-friendly city, and have set up a high-level leading group with the party secretary and mayor as the team leaders, forming a good development pattern for continuously and deeply promoting the construction of child-friendly cities from top to bottom.
Deyang has incorporated the construction of a child-friendly city into its guidelines such as the "14th Five-Year Plan", “the Outline for Deyang’s Children Development, and the "Development Program for the Senior and the Young", and has successively issued an array of policies for continually boosting the comprehensive development of a child-friendly city. Focusing on a number of areas closely related to children's development, such as childcare, education, health, and juvenile protection, Deyang has carried out "Nine major projects" to build a livable environment of higher quality and appearance, and implemented more than 50 projects related to child-friendly space, with a total investment of more than RMB15 billion; moreover, it has made every effort to supplement child-friendly facilities, activity venues, leisure and sports facilities that have become its name cards with satisfactory achievements.
In the next step, Deyang will use the opportunity of the pilot project to accelerate the construction of a child-friendly city. Closely adhering to the cultural characteristics of "Sanxingdui ruins making a stunning appearance", "Unique family style with virtue and filial piety", "Inherited spirit of workmanship", "A pioneer of national model", it will continue to dig deep into the ancient Shu civilization of Sanxingdui, millennium virtue and filial piety culture, and the Chinese value, national spirit and Chinese strength of workmanship of the times; while taking the construction of child-friendly space project as the starting point, and launching multi-directional publicity campaigns, we will continue to promote the concept of "children-focused city development", so that children friendliness will become an important symbol of high-quality urban development, providing a child-friendly city construction model with Deyang characteristics that can be replicated elsewhere. (Reporter: Zeng Zheng)
