{"id":6014,"date":"2025-10-16T02:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T02:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/6014\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T02:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T02:44:06","slug":"mayor-watson-unveils-plan-to-prioritize-health-safety-happiness-of-austins-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/6014\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Watson unveils plan to prioritize health, safety, happiness of Austin&#8217;s children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AUSTIN, Texas  \u2014 Austin is taking a big step toward putting kids at the center of the city\u2019s future.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Kirk Watson launched a new initiative aimed at making Austin the best place in America to be a kid.<\/p>\n<p>Austin is home to about 176,000 children, or about one in five people.<\/p>\n<p>Watson says the new effort, called Generation ATX, will focus on making sure they\u2019re healthy, safe, and happy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;ll be a national model for cities putting kids at the center of their futures,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n<p>He says it\u2019s a movement designed to change the course of Austin\u2019s future by focusing on where the city wants its children to be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the single best way for Austin to be the complete city we want it to be&#8230; is for us to focus on where we want our kids to be,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/central-texas-nonprofit-seeks-mentors-for-47-students-in-need-of-guidance-and-support\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/central-texas-nonprofit-seeks-mentors-for-47-students-in-need-of-guidance-and-support\" class=\"themeColorForLinks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ALSO | Central Texas nonprofit seeks mentors for 47 students in need of guidance and support<\/a><\/p>\n<p>CBS Austin reached out to the mayor\u2019s office to find out how the initiative plans to reach each child in Austin, and which neighborhoods or demographics might be prioritized first.<\/p>\n<p>The mayor\u2019s office said, \u201cThe work that CivicSol will do for the next eight months in Phase One will help inform the questions you\u2019ve asked. We don\u2019t want to prejudge anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/civicsol.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/civicsol.com\/\" class=\"themeColorForLinks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">CivicSol,<\/a> an Austin-based public strategy and planning firm, is helping shape Generation ATX by defining its three pillars \u2014 healthy, safe, and happy kids.<\/p>\n<p>They are also creating a scorecard to track progress and a roadmap to guide strategies that support children across the city.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a proud thing for us to be serving the world from here,\u201d said Ian Forber-Pratt, president of Children\u2019s Emergency Relief International.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ceri.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/ceri.org\/\" class=\"themeColorForLinks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Children\u2019s Emergency Relief International<\/a>, or CERI, recently moved its global headquarters to Austin. The organization is one of several local and national partners supporting Generation ATX.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis movement is being really smart in regard to data, understanding that there are lots of organizations working with kids, but are they coordinated, are they working together?\u201d Forber-Pratt said.<\/p>\n<p>He says protecting childhood goes hand in hand with strengthening the community \u2014 a goal also shared by the mayor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe love our kids. We want them to love their home. We want them to know that Austin loves them,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n<p>The first phase of Generation ATX began on Wednesday and will run through 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The initiative is receiving initial funding from local partners, including H-E-B, Texas Mutual, the First Day Foundation, and Wells Fargo, which together contributed $200,000 in seed money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Austin is taking a big step toward putting kids at the center of the city\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,670,447,6156,6157,584,6155,3961],"class_list":["post-6014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-children","tag-community","tag-generation-atx","tag-happiness","tag-health","tag-mayor-watson","tag-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}