OMAHA, NE – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today delivered the keynote address to Girls Incorporated of Omaha’s eighth annual Lunch for the Girls. Senator Clinton was introduced by Warren Buffett, a long-time supporter of Girls Inc.

A transcript of Senator Clinton’s remarks follows.


Senator Clinton: Thank you very much. I am absolutely delighted to be here with all of you this morning. I want to thank Warren for his introduction. I know that you’re well aware that no one can know Warren or his extraordinary daughter Susie for more than five minutes without hearing about Girls Inc. I think the very first conversation that I ever had with either one of them somehow got around to Girls Inc. and I am delighted to be here because I know this organization holds such a special place, not only in the Buffetts’ hearts but in all of you because this is such a community effort. Bill has been here before, and I know how much he enjoyed supporting this event, and of course the greatest privilege that I have is to be here to lend my support now in a very tangible way. I have long supported Girls Inc. and I find the work that you’re doing – I just met with about, oh, twenty of the young women who have been touched by the support and generosity that so many of you have provided over the years and it is a tremendous tribute to this community.

I also want to thank Warren for his leadership during the last weeks. During this economic crisis, there were two sources of financial support for the economy – the United States Treasury and Warren Buffett – and Warren Buffett acted first. You know, his extraordinary integrity and his acumen was matched as well by his commitment to our county. But I have to tell you, Warren, I did not bid on the car that you were auctioning off, but I know that someone will be lucky enough to have what you call the dream car, as a good investment in the future of Girls Inc.

I also want to thank those of you who were so gracious and hospitable to my daughter Chelsea when she was here some months ago on my behalf, and I told some of you that I asked her the other day – because she did four hundred events for me from one end of our country to the other – I said, “Well what places would you go back to?” Now usually the places that I would go back to, and that I thought she would go back to, would be places I had won, because, you know, it’d make you feel a little better. But without hesitation, Nebraska was on the list in the top five, because she said she had such a great time with the people who she met here and in Grand Isle and so many of you who came out to see her. So personally, as a mom, thank you for taking such good care of her while she was on the campaign trail working her heart out for me.

And I come to you now at such a critical moment in our country’s history for everything we care about. Those of you who are here today obviously are committed to helping fulfill the mission of Girls Inc. You see it as a personal and social good. And people like Roberta Wilhelm and others who labor on the staff and on the board have certainly made a strong impression with this organization and what it means to the girls and their families who are served. But I think it’s important to recognize that Girls Inc., Omaha, even Nebraska, does not exist in a vacuum. It really matters whether you have partners at all levels of government and certainly in the private sector as well. You are doing so much to mentor and guide and tutor and enrich the lives of these strong, smart, bold young women. Every single day, through Girls Inc., you are helping them discover and fulfill their God-given potential.

That has been my mission for my adult life as a child advocate and an advocate for women and families. My first job as a lawyer was working for the Children’s Defense Fund, alongside one of my mentors, Marian Wright Edelman, and we advocated for children without the means to stand up for themselves and often without adults in their lives to do it for them. Children with disabilities, children trapped in the adult justice system, foster children, children without health care, children in crumbling and inadequate schools, children in need.

You know, life hands all of us obstacles. We know that. If you’ve lived long enough, you have certainly seen it in your own life and in the lives of those around you. But what has always guided my public work is a very simple principle: that no child should be asked to meet the difficult challenges that life throws up alone – that every child needs a champion. Luckily for most of us that champion is near at hand – a parent, or a grandparent, an older sibling, an aunt or an uncle, a coach or a minister – someone you know personally who’ll be there to watch your back and help you along life’s way. I believe it’s always taken and it always will take a village – and that village is us.

And now more than ever with the challenges we face in the economy and with us knowing so much more about what it does take to provide children with the tools they need to fulfill their own God-given potential we turn to organizations like this. Every boy and girl needs and deserves champions. And that’s especially true for those who through no fault of their own haven’t had the easiest path. And I think our nation owes more to our children than we have yet delivered. Now of course we know that in lots of statistics we see improvement, improvement in health status, improvement in the standard of living, improvement in access to education, improvement in infant mortality. We see the statistics that speak to the slow but steady progress that we have made as a nation over the last decades. But given who we are as a nation, given what we should expect from ourselves, we fall far short. In his introduction Warren talked about our founders and their ideals, and their values and their belief in the potential of this great nation. They may not have included some of us in the Constitution and our founding documents, but they certainly included the human spirit. And over time we began to tear down the barriers that blocked that spirit from flourishing. And yet we fall so far short of what we are capable of doing.

When I look at the mission of Girls Inc., which acts as a champion on behalf of girls every day, I see the support that it has provided, the mentoring after school, during the summer, the experiences, as some of the girls were telling me – on field trips to Washington, or to New York City or to New Orleans to help clean up after Katrina. Thousands of girls each year are helped, but as a nation we fall far short.

Take mentoring for example. You know, every one of us, if we had time, could point to someone who entered our life at a critical juncture and gave us maybe that little extra boost of confidence, that helping hand, that critical eye and ear. I certainly had that growing up – from my youth minister in church and teachers who I was privileged to learn under, and I see the difference that it made in my life and I know what it can mean to others. Adults have such an obligation to the next generation. We do our best in our families to fulfill that responsibility and then many of us reach out – through faith based organizations, through Girls Inc. and other places where we can continue to try to give to individuals perhaps the chances for that better future that they might otherwise be missing.

But there is so much more we can do. I would like to see us forgive portions of student loans for college students who volunteer as tutors and mentors for children in poor communities. I would like to see us try to match every child in foster care, all five hundred thousand of them, with a responsible adult, starting with college students and giving those young people the reward of working with and serving someone else. I would like to see us begin to do more through AmeriCorps and National Service to help young people navigate through school. We lose too many youngsters too early. By third grade, experienced teachers can tell us who’s going to make it and who isn’t. We need a little more support, we need a person, a real live person, to be there when someone falters or falls, to send the message that there are those of us behind you – come on, get up, you can keep going. I want to see us, and this is a goal that Senator Obama and I share, to have a preschool program that will help those children who need it the most be best prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that education offers. People say to me all the time, “but isn’t that expensive?” Yes, and so are the consequences of not providing that kind of launching pad for children who are otherwise going to be left out and left behind.

I feel so strongly, as many of you know, that our failure to have quality, affordable health care for every American – especially for our children, too often condemns those very children to a life less than they would have if they were given the health care, the mental health care, the dental health care, that will give them a better chance in life.

Through the work I did with the Children’s Defense Fund for many years, serving on the board for 20 years, I saw the effect of a lack of access to affordable health care – the stories are so painful in this rich and generous country of ours. The 12-year-old boy in Maryland who had a toothache. It kept hurting. His mother didn’t work for someone who had insurance and they weren’t eligible for Medicaid. She kept calling everybody she could find to try to get a dental appointment, and the dentists often would say, you know, we take so many charity cases, call my friend, he will take you. This went on until finally the abscessed tooth burst, the boy ended up at Johns Hopkins intensive care, and we ended up spending $300,000 – futilely to save his life when a $50, $80 visit to the dentist would’ve taken care of the problem. It’s not only the right thing to do for all of our children, but it’s smart, it’s economically wise to take care of the problems before they become so expensive and often unable to be remedied.

We know that young girls in particular need the outlet that athletics provides, that extracurricular activities provides. And I remember very well, when young women participating in sports to build healthy bodies as well as healthy minds met with a lot of rejection. There weren’t the opportunities in athletics that would have filled the need. But since Title IX was enacted 36 years ago, young women have participated in high school athletics and college athletics. And we know that it has helped them be better prepared for what waits ahead. We’ve had to fight to keep Title IX alive, but I think the results speak for themselves.

And we need to give our young people more to do physically. We need to put physical education back into our schools. We need to get our kids out from in front of the computer screen and the TV screen. Because the biggest health threat that children in America now face is obesity, and we’re not doing enough in our schools, and reaching out to our families to try to stem this tide. There is so much that we must try to prevent. Diabetes is escalating in teenagers – adult onset Diabetes, type 2. Heart disease is showing up in young people. And this is beginning to be a global phenomenon, as our Western diet and our ways travel around the world. So health care, activities, mentoring, good examples are all ways we can literally help save our kids’ lives. Otherwise, as one analysis has foreseen, we may be raising the first generation of American children who will not have as long or a longer life span than their parents. This is an emergency that demands our attention and action now.

Here at Girls Inc., I know that you teach girls important lessons about their health and about how to protect themselves from teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. As First Lady, more than ten years ago, I helped launch the National Campaign to Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy. We set a goal of trying to cut teen pregnancy by one-third, and we met that goal. We actually were able to see the rate of teen pregnancy in our country decrease. But we have to continue to build on that success. We have to advocate for good values and good education. And we have to hold our ground on behalf of evidenced-based, medically-based policies that will protect the health and rights of young women and girls.

Here at Girls Inc., I know that you help teach young women career and life skills that will help them go further in life. You help them balance a check book, you help them learn how to use the Internet effectively, speak in front of groups, create resumes, and so much more. Yet as a nation we do not yet fully and equally value women’s work. We don’t value women’s work in the home and we don’t value women’s work in the workplace. The fact is that women today earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns in the same job. We make it so hard for working parents, both moms and dads, to attend a parent-teacher conference or schedule a child’s doctor appointment. Let’s empower women with the skills and confidence to negotiate for equal pay. Let’s overturn the Supreme Court decision on the Lilly Ledbetter case that made it impossible for women to fight pay discrimination in the courtroom. Let’s strengthen the Family and Medical Leave Act which has already helped 60 million women and men as working parents, working sons and daughters, to take time off to take care of their obligations at home. You know the question has never been: can women compete on a level playing field? We know the answer. The answer is yes. The question is, can we level the playing field for women so they have a chance to compete to the fullest of their abilities?

And the education system still remains the key. If we start with a good preschool education system, if we encourage our children to fall in love with the joy of learning, if we start creating a new paradigm of education – because from my perspective, our education system still looks too much like it looked when I was in elementary school and high school. Everything else in our lives has changed. We don’t do business the same way, we don’t shop the same way. Yet our schools are remarkably similar to what they have been. We need to empower individual learning and we need to use technology more effectively to do that.

I’ve seen some wonderful examples around the country that need to be taken to scale. And I’m hoping that in the next administration we will have an education policy that actually will look to see what the problems are in local districts, with local students, and try to empower our local communities to have the best education systems they can have, with accountability and high quality guaranteed.

And one of the consequences of the economic crisis is that too many young people are now seeing their dreams of college dashed. They are unable to continue or to find the funding that they had expected. The cost continues to increase. We need to move towards universal community college access so that every person in America willing to work hard will be able to get at least two years of post-secondary education in preparation for a job or a professional position, or to go on to a four-year institution. And we have to persuade our young people that they are in global competition. But in order to get the scientists and the mathematicians and the technical experts that our economy will need, we’ve got to do more starting earlier to engender that commitment and even love of learning. That’s why I appreciate what Girls Inc., does, because the learning that goes on after school is often the most meaningful for the girls who participate. It’s encouraging to them. It’s emboldening to them. And we need to find ways of taking that into the classroom so we reach even more of our children. Our education system must prepare every child for a future that will require flexibility and adaptability. There is no predicting what the jobs of 10 or 15 or 20 years will be, but a good education can lay in the base so that every one of our young people is prepared. If you look around the world today, you can see the effects of other nations working to make sure that their young people are prepared. And I don’t think we have yet prepared ourselves to help our kids compete.

As I traveled across our country during the presidential campaign, I saw so many young people who are wondering how they will fit in, where they will be accepted, and what they will do. Now for many of our children, they have become incredibly comfortable traveling the world, and they would be just as much at home working in Shanghai as in San Francisco, or Abu Dhabi as Omaha. But that does not represent the vast majority of the young people of our country. We need to begin once again to create good jobs with rising incomes. We have to promise the American Dream to those who are willing to work hard for it. We have to be willing to make the sacrifices now that will give the next generation a better opportunity.

I’m very confident about America, but I’m also conscious of how important it is that we make adjustments. We can’t just assume that we’re going to continue to dominate the world economically or that we will have the opportunities for those young people here today that they deserve to have. So we have to change direction as a nation, in order to be sure we have an economy that continues to keep the promise that America represents. We have to do our part by raising kids with good habits and an ability to put that work ethic behind whatever their goals might be. But it’s pretty difficult for many Americans today to feel that that promise is still there for them. And if the middle class feels stressed and pressed, think how hard it is for people who are struggling just to make it into the middle class. In fact we’ve had a lot of people fall out of it the last several years, taking their children with them.

So that’s why organizations like Girls Inc. are even more important. As you teach young women to stand up for themselves, as you give them the skills they need to navigate an uncertain future, to set goals and to dream big, there is nothing more American than that. And then we have to be there for these young women as they incorporate and believe what they are told here at Girls Inc., with the kind of country that many of us took for granted when we came of age. I know that this community has supported Girls Inc., for years because you understand what it means in the lives of individuals. But you also are doing it because that’s what we do in America. We fill those gaps between what the market can do and what government does. It’s really the third stool – the third leg of the stool of what makes our country work. A free-market economy that works effectively, with adequate regulation, a government that is competent, and then civil society, which De Tocqueville recognized as being so unique to America, in which we celebrate today by helping Girls Inc.

So I am really grateful that you understand the significance that this organization plays in and of itself, and the role it fills in your village. When I wrote a book called It takes a Village to Raise a Child, using an old African proverb, I used to have people sometimes ask me, “Well what does that have to do with America?” and I would be taken aback by that question, because I remember my village very well. I remember in those days the adults presented a united front against the kids. No questions asked. You know, my late father used to say: “you get in trouble at school; you’ll get in trouble at home.” And we had a sense that yes, there was this great embrace from family to school, to community to church, in my instance, where the village helped raise you. Given our fast-paced life today, it’s harder, which is why we have to do even more to make sure that children have that experience. Children need love, attention, discipline, guidance, and they need a village, and that’s what Girls Inc., is part of providing.

We’re on the brink two weeks from today of a significant election. I know Girls Inc., is non-partisan so I’ll save my remarks for the rally next door. But I think we all know that we can’t assume that America will be there for our kids and grandkids the way we want it to be if we don’t do our part. For some, it’s voting or participating in elections. But for many of us it’s also working to make sure that those places in life that catch you when you fall, that extend a helping hand, that are there in the bad times as well as the good ones, have an extended reach so we don’t lose any child we can possibly hold close.

You know, when I was thinking about coming here, I was struck by all of the conversations I had during my campaign about being a woman running for President. You know, I didn’t set out to be a woman running for President but that’s the only way I could run. And I was bolstered every single day by the people I met – a lot who put their hopes into my candidacy and into my campaign. By the young girls who would come to my events and often times they had written me notes or they had drawn me pictures. Or who looked at me and said: “I can be President too!” The moms and dads who would come with their daughters and hold them on their shoulders way back at some rally and I could see them, you know, pointing at me and whispering in their daughters’ ears. And I met a lot of women in their 90s who were born before women could vote as my own mother was. It’s almost impossible to think, now, how there are women here today who, when they were born in our country, were denied their citizenship. They have seen so much change in such a relatively short historical period.

That’s why I’m always hopeful about America. You know, as Winston Churchill famously said, “The Americans always get around to doing the right thing after trying nearly everything else.” And that’s how I feel. That our country had a presidential contest that included two people who were not part of the Constitution, who were not on the minds of our founders, but who were the beneficiaries of the countless acts of private citizens and public officials to knock down barriers and to end discrimination, so that we can honestly look now in the eyes of any African-American child and any girl and say: “Yes, you can be President of the United States of America.”

Our new President will need all of our help. Just as every single day Americans respond to the needs of the people among us, we have to do more in the next years to make sure that we secure the kind of future that the young women I talked with, who come here to Girls Inc., deserve. I am confident that this organization will lead the way. And I am hopeful that we will always be able to take pride and have tremendous confidence in the opportunities that will be provided to every single one of our children, so that America’s promise will live on forever. Thank you all very much.

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