MISSION - OBJECTIVES - ACTIONS

MISSION

The Youth Media Alliance (YMA) seeks to enrich the lives of Canadian children and teens by helping improve the quality of the content created for them on all screen-based media. The Alliance pursues its mission of encouraging high-quality content by presenting annual awards of excellence to the best productions targeting young English- and French-speaking Canadians. It offers ongoing training tailored to the special needs of youth production professionals through workshops, seminars, and special events such as the Children, Youth & Media and Média-Jeunes conferences. Since 2015, the Youth Media Alliance has developed and now offers four scholarships: the YMA Andra Sheffer, the YMA Thérèse-Pinho, the YMA Steven DeNure and the John Rooney Creator Fund. YMA also conducts original research investigating the impact of screen-based media on young people. Finally, Youth Media Alliance advocates for the needs of Canada’s child and youth media consumers in matters of public policy.

Objectives

All Youth Media Alliance members agree that the best way to ensure that screen-based content for youth has a positive impact on its target audience is to:

• Provide professionals with ongoing training to help them meet the specific needs of children and teens.
• Encourage high-quality content by rewarding Canada’s best productions.
• Make sure that the largest possible number of Canadian children and teens can regularly access high-quality content.

Actions

YMA pays tribute

to the creators of quality screen-based content for children and teens by presenting its annual awards of excellence.

YMA promotes

the production of high-quality, varied content for youth.

YMA organizes

seminars, conferences, internships and training workshops.

YMA encourages

children and families to sit down together to watch high-quality, screen-based Canadian content for youth.

YMA undertakes

research projects that shed light on the issues of producing screen-based content for youth.

YMA intervenes

with the CRTC and other government agencies in issues concerning children’s television in Canada.

YMA provides

consulting services for producers, the media and the public in connection with the media, violence and advertising.