OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAM

PIINFA's activities are in the framework of the Strategic Plan 2000 - 2004 approved on the 75^th Meeting of the IIN Directing Council held in Ottawa, Canada. Among the strategic objectives mentioned on this Plan, the PIINFA approaches practically all of them. It is precisely through the information and the systematization that we want to: 

-                     Enhance the presence of children's issues on the political fora both national and international,
-                     Strengthen the cooperation between organizations related to children's issues working on the region,
-                     Increase the exchange of knowledge, information and experiences, as well as promoting horizontal
            cooperation,
-                     Strengthen the relations with the organized civil society 

The central objective of the PIINFA is to produce information systems and promote their use of information systems. These systems are mainly addressed to people and institutions working in favor of children, in order to generate integral information focal points that will help to change the living conditions of children in the Americas. 

A series of projects for capturing, analyzing, and supplying services in the various child-related areas are implemented in the framework of this Program. An approximation strategy is used, through reference institutions in each country, which in turn are linked to regional and departmental sub-centers, to build up a network for mutual collaboration and exchange of knowledge between agencies with similar objectives. 

At the same time, the PIINFA developed a complementary strategy based on a new form of relationship with the community, which helps to improve the impact of information, provides feedback to the system and sensitizes public opinion. The idea is to select a group of Key Persons in each country to convey information to users in a differentiated way, thus tackling this task in several fronts, in order to improve impact. 

In its communication strategy, the PIINFA gives priority to the plurality in information dissemination forms, building up an scenario making possible for the interested actor to have access to this information through some of the ways indicated. 

Thus, the beneficiaries of the PIINFA and related-projects are children in extreme poverty and at social risk in the hemisphere. The users of the projects of the PIINFA and their services are a wide spectrum of decision-makers, senior state officials, governmental authorities, professionals, scholars, educators, and public and/or private child care institutions. The Focal Centers in each country are the information go-betweeners, because they manage the program at the national level and disseminate the information. 

The common denominator of the PIINFA projects is the supply of services focused on addressing the basic needs of institutions, decision-makers, planners and people involved in child and family issues. In turn, flexible data processing tools were designed, capable of generating data on the system itself that makes continued evaluation, adjustments and modifications easier.  

Although all the projects share the same bases allowing for the exchange of information in each country, they adapt to the specific characteristics of national situations, evading the strictness of informatic proposals that just seek to standardize broad and diverse situations. 

The goal of the PIINFA is to produce a cultural change in the social management of child-related issues in the Americas, based on information, involving decision-makers, planners, directors and professionals in child and family care institutions. 

The attainment of this goal implies the need to democratize the use of information facilitating access to reliable data on legal and statistical subjects, prevention programs, technical and financial child-related institutions, anywhere in the hemisphere. This democratization is possible whenever there are institutional mechanisms in the system that allow for horizontal transference of experiences and permanent training of local agents to promote the use of information available in the system. In turn, it is of utmost importance to be able to restore and respect the identity of each country and region, designing amicable and accessible systems for users within a unique hemisphere, with varied languages and different cultures. 

Simultaneous to its decentralized management process, tending to autonomous management practices, the IIN is both the manager of the system and its promoter within the inter-American ensemble of nations. At the early project implementation stages in the countries, the IIN, along with international cooperation, facilitates financial aid so that the    tools may be incorporated into the institutions and be self-supported through institutional funds. 

The process initiated in 1987 is targeted to create the right conditions throughout the region towards a qualitative change from the way childhood information has been historically produced.  

The goal of this process is not based on the technological elements to be used, nor in the products to be created, but rather in the cultural change produced in the use of information. This is the great challenge on which the development of the PIINFA is grounded. This is a participatory and awareness-building process where the PIINFA only plays a dynamic role, unleashing processes further promoted and developed by the agents who work for and with the information.