Our community is emerging from a period in which the recession caused us to lose our vitality and vision. With a new City Council, Mayor and County Commissioners, new corporate interest and visioning for our community, I sense a renewal of hope.
As our leaders and citizens further the vision of a healthy, vibrant community, I challenge us all to embrace one vital component to the quality of life we hold dear in Colorado Springs: the safety and well-being of our children.
Thus far this year, five children in our community have died due to child abuse. In the past, we who work in the field of child abuse prevention might see as many child deaths in an entire year, not in just a few months.
A healthy and economically strong community must have as its foundational principle the health and welfare of our children. How can we tell the story of a great community for new businesses and tourism if we cannot keep our children safe?
Masai warriors determine the health and well-being of their tribes by greeting one another with the simple question, “How are the children?”
Should we do any less?
Author Lillian Kats wrote: “Each of us must come to care about everyone else’s children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people’s children. After all, when one of our children needs a life-saving surgery, someone else’s child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else’s child will be responsible for the violent act. Life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people’s children.” Yes, we are inextricably linked to all the children of this community.
We have a fundamental obligation to nurture and protect all our community’s children. They have the right to grow up in a community that holds high their rights, dignity and value! Our new leadership in the city and county can set their intentions on the stewardship of child protection assuring safe passage into adulthood.
The challenge I put forward to the new city and county leaders is for the health and well-being of all our children to become a core principle of your efforts to create a vibrant community. In every project we work on to better our community, we must always ask, “How are the children?”
CASA’s work every day for the safety of children and I, as their executive director, ask that as elected leaders you would contact me about how we all can work together for a better community for children.
“THESE ARE ALL OUR CHILDREN. WE WILL ALL PROFIT BY, OR PAY FOR WHATEVER THEY BECOME.” James Baldwin
Trudy Strewler Hodges
Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region
