We are honored to have with us today. Najib Halla be chairman of save the children a global charitable organization working actively and more than 40 Nations to help children in need the former. CEO of Pan American World Airways. Our speaker is an aviator once a test pilot and the person who made the first continuous transcontinental jet powered flight as well as an entrepreneur. Mr. Hal abhi has had a distinguished career in public service serving four presidents in significant roles. He served President Truman and secretary Acheson in the office of research and intelligence as it emerged from OSS and secretary Forrestal is defense Affairs advisor during the formation of NATO.He cheered President Eisenhower's advisory commission that helped establish an independent Federal Aviation agency. He served President Kennedy as Federal Aviation Administration and was responsible for the introduction of stringent safety regulations as well as the desegregation of all US Air Terminals and the Nixon Administration. He was selected by Secretary of State William Rogers to chair the US Japan Business Council. Most recently. Mr. Halliday has served as board chair of the Wolf Trap foundation and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University Center for atmospheric research in Boulder Colorado and of the American University in Beirut his many honors include the Legion of Honor from France the metal of independence from Jordan and the Order of Cedars and Lebanon. He has just returned from the Middle East where he observed the historic signing of the peace Accord between Jordan and Israel as you know, mr. Halliday has a strong connection to Jordan His Daughter Lisa is Queen Noor all Hussein of Jordan. Following. Mr. Hal bees presentation questions will be addressed from the audience Jane mrazek executive director and Gloria McClintock and of Minnesota meeting will move among you to manage the question session. You may use the slips of paper on your table to jot down questions for discussion. I'm now very pleased to introduce to you najib holiday. Thank you very much. Steve at a joy to be here the Minnesota meeting our host George and Sally who Pillsbury have given us a wonderful quick Mall tour and it's an eye opener and an arch Faller. We have such a wonderful audience here today The Young and the mature. We have save the children sponsors and we are so grateful for their support of children all over the world. We have in this marvelous Community many entrepreneurs and I'd like to introduce the subject of the day by calling us all public service entrepreneurs how to figure out how between the government sector on the one hand and the private sector on the other there is a mid sector that's full of love and caring and capability for changing the current prospects for children all over the world. The title was given to you is children and women first waging peace. And that is as you all well know. So so needed today our economy here in the United States is improving. Government is downsizing or right-sizing. We're making peace politically and we'll talk about that more later. And at the same moment and you are children and masters of Technology of affluence and of Information Systems in this area known all over the world for those accomplishments at that very moment. The prospects the plight of children around the world getting worse and interestingly enough as we grow more affluent in the last year or so a Gallup poll shows that are giving and volunteering are declining. That's a bad Trend and I suppose it's because we're uncertain about the future. We're a little Worried about the huge debt overhanging us federally State local and even our own credit card debt that we began to shrink back a little from our opportunities and obligations around our country and around the world every year 8 million children. die from preventable diseases, where's the immunization one in every three children in developing countries is malnourished more than a hundred and twenty million children are denied the opportunity to go to school and with us today are some school children growing into maturity under really ideal conditions, and they Should be aware of how lucky they are. The everyday struggles of children around the world just to survive childhood are very formidable. And when normal life explodes into a war or Civil War the most brutal victims the most brutalized victims are the children and all their innocence in the last 10 years alone more than a million and a half children have been killed in armed conflict 5 million have become refugees and 12 million have been forced from their normal homes. And most of that's in Africa and the Middle East these facts are drastic reminders that the world is not a safe place today for children. It was for most of us. And we have the opportunity not just to give back but to go back and renew the opportunities we had if anybody believes these problems are foreign consider this in the United States. There are many isolated rural communities and inner city neighborhoods that rival the third world in terms of suffering and this is a particular concern to outfits like save the children. We're a u.s. Organization, but we're all over the world as these annual reports which have been glimpsing show 62 years ago. We were born in the Hills and Hollows of Appalachia during the Great Depression. And now we are at work at home and abroad more than one in five kids now lives below the poverty line in our great country. A rate twice that of the other industrialized country put another way every 10 every 30 seconds a new American baby is born into poverty in our country. There's a statistic that is also astounding to me child immunization has fallen as low as 10% and some inner city and rural areas in the Western Hemisphere. Only Bolivia and Haiti have lower rates of immunization and we know these are unsatisfactory undesirable must be changed situations. But when we think that every 26 seconds in the United States is a baby is born to an unmarried mother. Often a teenage mother we know we've got a lot of work to do every two hours a child is murdered every four hours a child commits suicide in this country. What does it all mean? It seems to me that we are losing a lot of potential good citizens and a lot of children who perhaps someday would become great leaders, but also means that we recording violence almost permitting condoning violence because when parents anywhere are denied hope for their children the seeds of anger take root and grow I've often thought if every couple who coupled created a job at the same time. That would be real progress for the Future Hope is within our reach for more than 60 years save the children and other private voluntary organizations have been showing Families how to lift themselves out of poverty how to give their kids a fair chance in life. a preventive health basic education Economic Opportunity. Those are the keys to transforming the helplessness into hopeful positive Action for Children. It works as well as in Appalachia as it does in Zimbabwe according to our Ada Z spectrum of experience in 36 to 40 developing nations. We've been teaching families the basic formula for ensuring their children's continued healthy development immunization even prenatal health care and education nutrition cleanliness Water Sanitation Family Planning childcare for the working mothers in particular and education. We build programs and trained Community workers to help ensure that all families can have access to Homegrown. Is that will endure after we as an organization go on to another County or another country to do our work we work with low-income single mothers in very similar ways. We help them to understand the importance of birth spacing. Sometimes that's a euphemism for Planned Parenthood other times. It's simply the fact that we know that children who are spaced and who are breastfed have a much much better opportunity to succeed in life. We teach about good nutrition and hygiene. We teach mothers to become professional family child care providers for their own and for Hep neighbor children in the developing world and here at home these programs reach mothers and children first mother is involved in early childhood development and learn. ride along with their little ones they can learn about language about all kinds of important things to their future whether in Bangladesh or South Carolina mothers and children can help each other. And in particular we think the empowerment buzzword I know of women and so many societies is so important to the health and future of the child if the mother has some self-esteem some self-confidence some capacity then that becomes not only a good child a good family but a good Community very often one interesting way is what we call micro-enterprise where you'll end maybe $500 to buy to cattle. Or a plot seeds and a plot of ground that that's the beginning of a good mother and a good child because she then is doing it on her own and she feels stronger and better able to cope. We have parenting classes. I don't know how many of you ever had any training to be parents. I know I didn't in fact I didn't start learning anything until kindergarten at age 6 in my generation now as I understand it you can start learning about six months before you were born. And so I've been deprived of six and a half years of learning. As I Now understand as a grandfather of 12, I think imma being a better grandfather. Am I not darling then I was a father. So we learn so often in this country of ours by doing rather than by learning in advance and that has had its impact on our children. I've just come back as Steve mentioned from the Middle East and I've been privileged to be at the the great ceremonies of Peace in September of last year on the White House lawn president nudged Arafat and rubbing and to a handshake. That was a little little cozy but not real cold. See and then the president had Robin and King Hussein on the same Lon and that was a lot Cozier and then last week the treaty signing and this little desert area between a lot which is the Israeli Resort town and Aqaba, which is the Jordanian Resort town down in the southern tip of those two areas and and there was a scene not unlike a country fair and Minnesota. It was a celebration and those men and women there were very enthusiastic about this. Demolishing and one of the political barriers to peace in that area. The president was didn't need to nudge Hussein and rabine. They former soldiers knew that there had to be peace in the area if the children of that area were to survive and and Thrive so it was a it was the beginning of a process either minimizing or demolishing the political barriers. And now now the problem is social and economic development and that is going to take a lot of effort a lot of money. We have at save the children been in the West Bank and Gaza now for 20 years as well as in Israel. And as these political barriers come down then we hope that the social and development work we've been doing will be facilitated and as you know in the last few Is in Morocco some peacemakers and dealmakers have gotten together. So the private Enterprise profit motive now can be harnessed to investment into that that area which is been so divided and so militarized over the years the Arabs lived 340 million of them lived there their lives in a lot of uncertainty. The Middle East is a microcosm of developing world as a whole while the GNP per capita annual growth rate for all of the Middle East countries was three point two percent in the period 1965 to 1980. It fell 2.7 percent during the last 10 years. As Shimon Peres said the Israeli foreign minister the other day at Morocco Israel should not remain an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. And when you go to Gaza as maybe some of you have you see that sea of poverty in the West Bank the occupied territories Gaza and then the islands sort of beacons of prosperity in the settlements and the settlements as you know have been built over the years for security reasons as well as other reasons, but the problem is That contrast between the hovels. of the gazans and the Palestinians contrasted with the kind of almost Gold Coast buildings and swimming pools Etc of the Israeli settlers creates a hell of a problem for Palestinian Youth and there are a lot of Palestinian youth the population growth for that region is incredible in compared comparison with our own and it's going up in the refugee camps in the territories occupied by the Israeli neighbor. The fertility rate is very high and the birth rate is approaching eight percent. As you know a normal healthy country growth rates around two to two and a half percent and anything above that begins to get Troublesome for food water space Etc. Primary School enrollment for girls is very low in this Arab world about 40% compared to 72 percent for boys some of you youngsters in the audience should be aware of how much progress we've made toward equality of educational opportunity. When you hear those numbers, the literary literacy rate among women is very low only about 20% of the Arab world compared to almost 50 percent for men. Now, here's where my beloved daughter the young Princeton graduate architect city planner is making a real difference and interestingly enough. She setting a humanitarian example within Jordan such as we've learned and she learned here in our country. She has a foundation They are working in education for youth are working in immunization area and sort of easing into the population control area that under religious constraints is not easy in the Arab world. The the Muslims have strictures not unlike our own Catholic strictures about birth control and birth spacing and so on but there is where she's working very hard and I think very effectively I think we must consider this Middle East area one of the most dangerous places for children because of the very high population growth rate that the high poverty rate the low literacy and the relatively poor. opportunities for women about half of the population under 15 years of age so you can understand how jobless hopeless contrast our life with those next door feelings breeds and intifada and intifada of young people throwing rocks and then others playing on those emotions and attitudes trying to make political progress or hey, if you will that's that's the kind of situation that not only in dangers Middle East peace, but in dangers our peace of mind and our budget that Gulf War consumed in the order of a hundred billion dollars worth of expense and when you think of what might have been done in development, And economic development with that money you begin to understand that the magnitude of the problem is a matter of fact, there are estimates that the actual cost of curing World poverty would be about one tenth of one percent of the world's annual economic output. If you could put it simply on poverty now, you know government isn't perfect in that respect. You also know that many Industries and corporations aren't very good at it either but somewhere in between there is that mid sector of Promise where if we can get the right investment on the right productivity levels getting the best of corporate success and Success is the answer and that's where the private service the public service entrepreneur comes in and I hope you all will more and more think of yourselves and become public service entrepreneurs our work in the field suggest that can be done recently. We've got what is called right-sizing in corporate life in order to get our overhead and fundraising costs down and our maximum program services in the field to your money. We have taken quite a few consolidating steps just like every good organization is doing in the light of change. We have a new president. We have some new management types from industry and from Academia and I We have with pardonable pride the best organization and management of any one of the private voluntary organization. We think we've got the best of corporate and philanthropic world. I think it's fair to begin to close here and say that our programs are working whether it's in prenatal Health Family Planning education job creation pertaining little investment substantial amount of jobs can be created in these developing areas. Women are a key. Let's call it Target group. They are the mothers. They are the Homemakers. They are the family preservers and they are the most important in this developing world and Jordan, for example, we have a program of group guaranteed lending and saving for example, you may have seen in our craft shop some of the banti hamidah rugs and tapestries. They have been put together by a little Bedouin settlement with a few dollars and the women instead of just enduring life are now employed on their own in their own weaving industry in Lebanon we have Similar micro investment and this kind of women and child-centered activity in the Middle East is very promising these steps toward Middle East peace have to be underpinned undergirded if you will with this kind of philanthropic developmental work if peace anywhere in the world is to succeed. We are going to have to put underneath the political peace social and economic investment and development that will prevail and when you spend one evening in the Jordanian Parliament watching the President of the United States give the most beautiful statement of what we stand for and what we seek in the Middle East he was extraordinary eloquent sincere. Very impressive in that Jordanian pilot the next night in the knesset the Israeli Parliament, seeing all of the warring Democrats and Republicans and liquid Nicks and so on you say to yourself progress is being made there is democratizing there is private investment and so despite the plight and not very happy prospects of children everywhere. I closed thinking that we can really make a difference through the private Enterprise philanthropic efforts of people like you and all of those who work for save the children. So thank you very very much. Thank you. Mr. Holley be of your listing to najib hollaby chairman of save the children speaking to the Minnesota meeting on the station's of Minnesota Public Radio. We have a first question from Richard Green from Honeywell. Thank you very much. Mister hollaby for the presentation of the fine efforts of the organization what to Pacific efforts. Can we in the business Community initiate to help sustain the efforts to wage peace against the ills of urban violence and that sense of hopelessness among our children, especially here in the United States. Thank you for that question. A new organization has just been formed by CEOs of a number of American corporations. It's called The New American Revolution and they have outlined a program of support within corporations within their own staffs within the community and within the country and overseas. There's an Awakening of corporate giving and doing in this area and I think it's very promising more specifically. We are looking at the kinds of programs that we've had successfully employed overseas in childcare and importing them back into the Mississippi Delta, which is a kind of third world area for our country corporations. Particular have a growing problem of child care how the working mother particularly the young working mother can support herself in the children and a job and have them in safe and sound care those initiatives by corporations are very very encouraging we have in Atlanta put together a coalition of all of the sectarian as well as non-sectarian like save the children agencies and we have a very elaborate safe and secure Child Care educational while being played with kind of program. So those are some of the things that that we hope will continue to work in the in response to your question. Thank you. Our next question is from Winthrop Rockwell. Mr. Haller be in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc and the changes in Eastern Europe. Can you tell us a little bit about what save the children has done in those areas? As you know, the great events that give us heart are the are the end of the Cold War the end of a part 8 in in South Africa and peace coming in the Middle East that's changed the whole political balance of the world. And in Russia. The Congress has voted a very substantial amount of foreign aid money and save the children has recently been awarded by a ID the agency for International Development a contract to go in and Tutor the Russians on how to set up private Enterprise private voluntary organizations. I had thought there weren't any in the Soviet Union interestingly enough. There were a few church-related private voluntary humanitarian organizations, sometimes sort of undercover, but more more and more recently in the open. There are also several hundred Hustler. Children exploitation of children is a fairly popular industry some of our radical religious right do it here in our country. And in the Russian Society of today. There are a number of what might be called in our country tax-exempt hustling outfit that the Russian government is quite willing to have us come in and help identify those and to tutor and help more legitimate altruistic organization. We have another program in the Caucasus. We don't like to just go in and feed and leave at some of the private voluntary organizations are inclined to do we like to go in and then develop within the country and enduring a kind of effort. For example in Somalia. We were there are several years before the recent problems and the idea was to improve their irrigation and their seed selection and their Agriculture and we had as many as 35,000 somalis working for a handful of save the children managers and they're still there and they're feeding themselves in that area of Somalia in the Caucasus in Armenia Azerbaijan and Georgia. We have a very substantial save the children group we go in with a handful of non-locals. The higher the locals and try to teach them how to do it for themselves so far that's been largely feeding that horrible earthquake in the Armenian area terrible internecine fighting and then garneau karabakh between Azerbaijan and Georgia has created a huge number of refugees. And so we are feeding and healing they're hoping that we can develop some enduring projects with Mother Child Care development. For example, it's so horrible to go from Baku up toward ngarneau. Karabakh and see kids. Well the ages of our young guest here today, 14, 15, 16 17 going up to the front and refugees coming back and we see these buses. I mean by to get shot up and the refugees coming back for us to feed and give first aid care to and but that's our of man's inhumanity to man. You have to have someone there who knows how to deal with it and luckily we've had that opportunity. Thank you. Mr. Habib. We have a next question for Lou Ann nyberg who is the director of the Minnesota Children's defense fund. Thank you. I had the wonderful privilege of chatting with your daughter about a year ago and the queen of Jordan and we discovered that Minnesota and Jordan both have about four and a half million people though. We have much more land and material resources and we're not coping with a regional war and floods of refugees. We started talking about the situation of our the children in both communities and I discovered from her that though. Our child poverty is going up. It is not going up in Jordan. In fact, it's falling that we do not have in Jordan the Family breakup the out-of-wedlock births and when we started talking about chronic hunger not hungry because of a war or some specific event, but just families that don't have enough food for their children that though that is a problem here about one in 10 children are eating from food shelves. That just wasn't an issue in Jordan and I'm wondering if you could from the lessons that say the children has learned around the world share some of what you think the cultural strengths are the private strengths the values in other places that maybe the us could learn from those places while we also impart some of our skills and our resources to those places. Thank you. We pride ourselves on having been founded here and developed here. And we're very big on the Indian reservations in the southwest and in the the Cherokee Nation the southeast and we've been most active in rural areas. We have not been very active or very successful in the urban ghetto areas. That's where the problem is the the poverty-stricken rural areas and the poverty-stricken ghetto areas of our cities. Of course you have here a much. I would call it stronger and thicker middle class and that stabilizes and gives you though. You don't always appreciate it or even know about it gives you a stability. It kind of predictability that that is terribly value but that is not possible in the Middle East. It has not been possible due to religious political and other struggle. Also, you have a lot of water here. And if you ever get tired of seeing all that water, there's a lot of places that would love to share it with you and and food and water we take for granted always in those countries. It has to be imported grown or just go without particularly without water because we're in both 20 States and 36 countries. We do have some interaction. We do have some techniques for example from Israel. We've imported to the United States and employed in Arkansas something called. Hippie, you've heard of it. Marian Wright. Edelman is a great supporter of it. And by the way, she your leader in in children's defense fund is one of the great world Advocates of the rights of women and children. We don't do any advocacy because we are a 501 3 C and we just operate on the field at The Grass Roots. You will do the advocacy that we are so happy to have you doing particularly on Capitol Hill and in the communities the things that we found in some of the rural areas in the third world are applicable in Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta even on the Indian reservations, so we are proud to be able to import those. There are things like immunization techniques. We have some projects up in Nepal and these villagers up in the Himalayas. They don't even know how to children are born. It's a surprise. Often well, it is here occasionally. I know but but but we put out a little packet in this little village and the package shows how a baby is born. It shows how it baby can avoid being born. It shows how early a prenatal Health Care will make a big difference how breastfeeding is terribly important and then it and it should then it has some condoms in the packet about that size. Now that's just Grassroots stuff, but that's not untrue in all the rural communities of the United States. Thank you. Our next question is from David teslo. You and your colleague certainly need to be commended for the great work. You're putting forward in the save the children organization. This is all pretty heavy stuff which are dealing with and we commend you for that perhaps you would allow me to ask you a question on the Lighter Side. What is it like to be the father in law of the king and what kind of experiences have you experienced in that role? Well, I tell you I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I have an absolutely wonderful wife who's taught me to be an environmentalist instead instead of a are technologists and she's taught me about World Wildlife and and so on I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful gentleman as a son-in-law sometimes people think he's my father-in-law which I would prefer that But he's absolutely a wonderful man. He's a good father after we came back on the airplane from Aqaba to Amman and between this big celebration out in the desert where he was under constant scrutiny and security and so on and so forth. He comes back to the palace and I'm on and I was in a little Chalet nearby and went up to see the grandchildren. They have two boys and two girls. The ages are 14 down to six and where is the king you'd say? Oh my God. He's either having a snort or a shower or something. He's there with the four kids telling them what happened on the desert and you know, that's like the good father here in our country. You comes back and to spend some times with the kids right after he gets home. So he's really a superb husband father gentleman. It's at times very stressful for him. He has had some malignancy which has according to your great Medical Center at Mayo has been cured and he comes back about every six months to for a check-up, but he's in good health never seen any better relationship between two chiefs of State than between him and rabine. They both need peace that they need to make the peace process work at times as little hard to get through to my daughter. She's pretty busy lady and it at times she has to come over here and instead. You know coming to the house and spending the night with us. She has about five security guys with her and so it's not the easiest kind of communication and and social life that we would all love but she's an advocate. He's a children's defense fund adequate for throughout the Middle East and and together together and I give him of course the credit they are democratizing Jordan. There's direct elections there women in the parliament are women in the cabinet. There's no longer martial law. There's direct election one vote one person for the Member of Parliament Senator Pillsbury appreciated that proportional representation. He might not have made it George and press censorship is ended and it's always been a very Mercantile private enterprise economy and some comparisons, you know between Jordan and Israel. Are quite interesting. There's no direct election in Israel. There is martial law for much of the population. There's press censorship on the TV Etc. And so in a way the king and queen will the king with her help is setting an example that I think we as Americans can extol. Thank you. Mr. Hobby. We have a next question from Bud friend Jones from Maple our church. I appreciate your the concern for prevention of say the children. I'm a native of West Virginia. I know in West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas elsewhere Texas. There's just a lot going on in the area of prevention but it makes sense to me to be addressing the systemic kind of the delivery of Health Care Services Nationwide. And of course in Washington DC the debate is not over about National Health Care what we ought to do should we have managed competition single-payer other options does how is say the children involved in the National Health Care debate? I would say hopefully awaiting results. We do not take part in the advocacy of any particular plan. We have remained non-sectarian non-political non-commercial independent and private to the I think the maximum extent so we would like to see for example a lot more Head Start and pre Head Start and post Headstart legislation and an appropriation. We are very eager to see Rosalynn Carter and Betty bumpers succeed in their every child by to that every child. The United States should be immunized against at least for and perhaps six diseases. Before they're two years old. That's just a few dozen million dollars to do that. And of course there are problems of access of having the child brought in or taking the immunization out to the child. But God Almighty. That's something that just on economic Financial basis we ought to do to keep that child out of a publicly supported hospital. And so we eagerly awaiting action on that kind of federal action, but we do not go and Lobby or Advocate. Thank you. Mr. Harvey we have time for one quick question one quick answer and we have a 16 year old student. Is that right can from like 15 year olds and student from Lakeville High School. What are you doing about the education of using contraceptives and are you getting any? Problems with governments handing them out to their people my first quick answer. We we are through avenues that are permissible to US advocating Women's Health birth spacing and contraception. There are several organizations who distribute contraceptives particularly condoms. We do in a few places where we are permitted to do. So the second part of your question is yes, we have encountered opposition to it both religious and governmental and it has to be done with great care.