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Skriven 2006-03-14 23:33:14 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0603144) for Tue, 2006 Mar 14
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Mrs. Bush's Remarks to the National League of Cities Conference
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For Immediate Release
Office of the First Lady
March 14, 2006

Mrs. Bush's Remarks to the National League of Cities Conference
The Hilton Washington Hotel
Washington, D.C.



10:30 A.M. EST

MRS. BUSH: Thank you all, very much. (Applause.) Thank you for the very
warm welcome. Thank you everybody. Be seated.

Thank you all very much. Kate, that was such a very, very lovely
introduction. I think it was the best introduction I've ever had.
(Applause.)

And everyone one of you out there can see by what Kate said how important
it is for all of us as adults in the United States to do everything we can
to help our young people. Kate is just an example of young people all over
our country who are idealistic, who want a better live, and who are willing
to work very, very hard to make the United States the best it could
possibly be. Thank you so much, Kate. (Applause.)

I also want to thank everyone here for serving your communities and your
cities, and for using the work that you have and the positions that you
have to shape a better future for adults and children across our country. I
especially want to acknowledge James Hunt, president of the NLC. Thank you
very much, James, for your work. (Applause.)

And I want to acknowledge my mayor, Anthony Williams, the Mayor of
Washington. (Applause.) And NLC's past president.

Today I want to tell you about the Helping America's Youth, the initiative
that the President announced at his State of the Union address in 2005 and
asked me to lead.

During my husband's first term, in my work with young people, I
concentrated mostly on early childhood education and early childhood
development. But I've always been interested in older children, as well,
and in young adults, and in their lives and what we can do as adults to
help them establish healthy and successful lives.

So over the last year, after the President announced the Helping America's
Youth Initiative, I traveled to many parts of our country, visiting with
young people and with the adults who are so important to their lives. I've
been to schools and to after-school programs. I've met with mentors and Big
Brothers and Big Sisters. I've visited with gang intervention programs --
one of them, Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, where I met the young
people who are leaving gangs and finding jobs thanks to the inspiration of
Father Gregory Boyle, who started Home Boy Industries.

At the White House Conference on Helping America's Youth, which concluded
this year of travel, Father Boyle spoke. And he spoke about the power of
hope in a young person's life. He said, "I've never met a hopeful kid who
joined a gang."

The White House conference featured scholars, researchers, and other adults
who work directly with young people. They shared the statistics, the
results of many of the programs that many of them had started. They shared
anecdotal evidence and their own experience. And then when we introduced
the Community Guide to Helping America's Youth -- I'll tell you more about
that in a minute -- but we introduced it then at this conference.

Many of us in this room, probably most of us, are fortunate to have had two
parents who showed us love and instilled in us the importance of education,
and hard work, and good character. When I was growing up, it was common for
most children to have two parents to rely on. And in Midland, Texas, I
could count on just about every adult in town knowing who I was and what I
was doing. And they'd report it to my mother if they saw me doing something
they thought I shouldn't. (Laughter.)

Today, America's children and young people face many more dangers than we
did just a generation ago. Drugs and gangs, and predators on the Internet,
violence in real life and on TV and movie screens are just some of the
negative influences that children have in their lives today.

And as today's children face greater dangers, they often have fewer people
to turn to for help. More children are raised in single-parent families,
most often without a father. Millions of children have one or both parents
in prison. Boys and girls spend more time by themselves or with a group of
their own peers than with other family members.

Young people need positive influences in their lives, and with the Helping
America's Youth initiative, we can make sure that they have them. We want
every child to be surrounded by caring adults who provide love, advice, and
encouragement, and who can serve as good role models. We're taking action
in the most important places in a child's life -- family, school, and
community.

Families are the foundation of every child's life. And we must do all we
can to help families stay together. Through programs like the Fatherhood
Initiative or the Marriage Initiative, the administration supports ways to
help parents stay together and to help men be involved and responsible
dads. (Applause.)

Schools are at the heart of Helping America's Youth because every child
must have a good education to have a bright future. Today, our schools are
improving thanks to accountability, to higher standards, and to the hard
work of teachers and principals who bring out the very best in their
students. But many students in middle school and high school have been
moved through the school systems without mastering vital skills like
reading. The Striving Readers Program provides funds from the federal
government that schools can use to help adolescents improve their reading
skills and become proficient at grade level. With stronger reading skills,
these students are more likely to graduate from high school and more likely
to be successful in life.

And communities -- and this is where you come in -- are the third part of
Helping America's Youth. Communities support families and schools. And
strong communities support families so that parents know that the values
they teach will be reinforced when their children are outside of home.
Strong communities bolster the work of schools by providing educational and
safe after-school activities for students. And strong communities nurture
healthy children by surrounding them with a network of loving people who
keep them safe and can help guide them toward a successful future.

Forming what we call "community coalitions" -- and, in fact, many of the
programs that I visited around the United States are successful because
they work with all different members of a community. Community coalitions
provide an important step in reaching children who need help. Community
coalitions bring together everyone in the community -- from teachers, to
mentors, to pastors, to parents, to police officers, to substance abuse
experts, social service providers, and business leaders. Anyone who can
have a positive impact on a child's life should be part of a community
coalition.

Each of you are leaders in your communities. You have positions of respect,
and authority. You have contacts with other people in your community who
work with children. You're well-versed in the issues that are faced by the
young people in your own community. And you have ideas about how to address
these tough problems.

We need your help.

I'm asking you personally, when you go back home, to contact people in your
community who want to make an extra effort to help America's youth; then
work together to form community coalitions. And make sure you include
children and young people like Kate themselves, because their opinions and
their experiences can be very informative.

The federal government can help make your community coalition effective.
The Community Guide to Helping America's Youth, which helps communities
assess their unique local needs and find programs and resources to meet
them. The Guide is what we introduced at the Helping America's Youth
Conference last year. And it's available at www.helpingamericasyouth.gov --
that's g-o-v.

In just a moment, Regina Schofield, Assistant Attorney General at the
Department of Justice, will show you that the guide is very easy to use.
With the community inventory feature, communities can assess each one of
the areas where they might need help. The Guide will direct communities to
more information about programs and resources that are designed to address
the challenges that each community faces. A map of your own community is
available on the guide. Your law enforcement can lay out your crime
statistics on this map. You can plug in each one of your assets for young
people in your community -- your Boys' and Girls' Clubs, your public
libraries, your school playgrounds -- each thing in your community that's a
special asset for children.

And then you can see which part of your communities, for instance, have the
highest crime rates, where you need the most law enforcement. When you see
those crime rates, you can see are they all happening between 4:00 p.m. and
7:00 p.m. at night. Do you need a good after-school program in that part of
town so that children and young people aren't out by themselves in these
neighborhoods at that time of day.

The Helping America's Youth website was developed, and tested, and is
managed by a team of seven White House Offices and nine federal agencies,
including the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The
Community Guide includes more than 180 programs that are shown to be
effective at preventing and reducing juvenile delinquency and other problem
behaviors.

I'm pleased to say that since October 27th when the website was introduced,
the site has been used by more than 90,000 people. And 120 communities have
registered to use the community inventory feature. These communities now
have access to a number of resources that can help them improve lives for
the children in their communities.

I've visited many communities during the last year, meeting people who are
helping children develop a strong character, a love of education, and the
self-respect and the self-control to stay away from drugs and violence and
gangs. One of the first visits I made was to "Think Detroit," a program
that teaches character development and healthy behavior through sports.
After my visit, a newspaper reporter asked one of the little boys that I'd
met what he thought about my visit. And I was moved when I read that the
little boy simply said, "I wish she could stay here." (Laughter.)

Children want us in their lives and they need us in their lives. And as
I've witnessed all across America, each of us has the power to help
America's youth.

Thank you very much for your wonderful work. Have a great conference in
Washington, and remember to visit the Helping America's Youth website when
you get home. Thank you all very, very much. (Applause.)

END 10:44 A.M. EST

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