Who: The Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada, Field Trip and Co. for creative, Empathy Inc. for media strategy. There’s also a strategic partnership with Astral to extend the campaign’s reach via its out-of-home assets.

What: “Impossible Choices,” an awareness campaign highlighting the lack of choices available to abused and neglected children. It’s an extension of the organization’s national fundraising campaign, “Stand Up for Kids.”

When & Where: The campaign broke in mid-October and includes digital, social, radio and out-of-home in Toronto and the GTA.

Why: The goal here is changing the future of at-risk youngsters. According to the Children’s Aid Foundation, less than half of kids involved in child welfare will graduate high school, while approximately 58% of homeless youth in Canada have previously been involved in the child welfare system.

How: The creative highlights the impossible choices faced every day by children of neglect and abuse, such as skipping school or leaving a younger sibling at home alone; skipping lunch or stealing dinner, or flushing a mom’s drugs or calling an ambulance.

All of the creative drives to StandUpForKids.ca, where visitors can sign a pledge to “create a new normal” for the country’s most vulnerable children, or donate to the Children’s Aid Foundation—which works with 74 child and youth-serving agencies supporting more than 22,000 vulnerable youngsters and 3,500 families.

And we quote: “When I hear about all the impossibly difficult choices out there for kids in child welfare, my first instinct is to think of all the positive choices I was given as a child or provided for my own children and it makes you realize how much at-risk kids and youth have lost out on in their own childhoods. Kids at risk of abuse and neglect should not have to make impossible choices.” — Valerie McMurtry, president and CEO, Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada,