The conference Breaking the poverty cycle - "Strengthening families and communities" is hosted by Véronique DE KEYSER (S&D, BE) with the support of Phillip COURARD, Belgian Secretary of State for Social Integration and combatting poverty, with the NGO "SOS Chidren's village" and with the participation of Kim CLIJSTERS, Belgian Tennis star, in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Brussels

conference

statement

children's rights (T)

DE KEYSER, Véronique (S&D, BE)

fight against poverty (T)

CLIJSTERS, Kim (BE)

Breaking the poverty cycle - "Strengthening families and communities": extracts from the public hearing and statements by Kim CLIJSTERS, Belgian Tennis star

SOUNDBITE (English), V&#233;ronique DE KEYSER (S&amp;D, BE), The orphans are in the middle of wars, in the middle of trouble. The most important place for them is their family, the duty of the EU and I take that for myself is to do what we can do to maintain children in families.

SOUNDBITE (English), V&#233;ronique DE KEYSER (S&amp;D, BE), One on of the main risks is poverty, poverty is a risk for everybody, but it is a risk for children, but also a risk for families.

SOUNDBITE (English), Helmut KUTIN, President of SOS Children&apos;s Village International, We experiences also children who need permanent family based care and that is giving in the Family base Children Villages around the world, which I call base camps from where we go into the Community and we try with all our efforts to strengthen this families, to give these children to have basics, schooling, basic nutrition, and basic health care. We hope and wish that in future more efforts are being done to strengthen families around this world so that no alternative care is necessary for children.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim CLIJSTERS, Belgian Tennis star and Ambassador of SOS Children&apos;s Villages Belgium, Children who are not, who don't grow up in a nice, warm family life situation are much more at a higher risk of educational failure, emotional damage, abuse, violence, these are very, very harsh facts, but this is reality and I think we need to face reality.

SOUNDBITE (English), Prof Michael UNGAR, School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada:, My understand of resilience is that in the context of adversity resilience is the capacity to navigate towards, by navigation I mean the capacity not only internally to move ourselves forward but also to navigate to the resource that are provided to us. In other words without good social policy at the level of government, without organisations NGO's supporting children's navigation, there is no place, they are lost at sea.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim CLIJSTERS, Belgian Tennis star and Ambassador of SOS Children&apos;s Villages Belgium, Money is important and you can obviously create more with money, but you don't create the most important things which is help and support that you get with the awareness, that is one of the reasons why Brian and I'm here, because we think that we can on a world wide basis provide a lot of support and so I'm very exited about the project and hopefully we can help out much more children, and so far they are doing a great job.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim CLIJSTERS, Belgian Tennis star and Ambassador of SOS Children&apos;s Villages Belgium, It's probably a number that can surprise a lot of people, 1 Mio children just in Europe, a lot of people probably think that this is a thing that only happens in 3rd World Countries, I was even as well surprised. Keep working hard for the future to improve and any child, one step at a time is an improvement and it gradually build up and I think that is the message and stand strong behind what you believe.