 organizations. In this case, many of you are here as individuals. You're the leader of your corporation as the CEO, or you're the leader of a chamber of commerce, or you're just a mover and a shaker in your community. That's why this particular meeting is very unique in that we are going in the next 24 hours to try to show you what has been going on in different parts of the country and developing partnerships in which we hope we can get you involved. The task force has been trying to do three things in particular. First, the president has felt that many innovative and creative things are being done throughout this country by organizations and cities and individuals. And so he said to the task force, try to search those out and then surface them and make them available to other organizations and other communities who would like to benefit from what that particular community has done. So the task force has been working very hard on this. We do have a data bank that we'll be talking to you about in which we have six or seven hundred examples in a computer here in the White House. The second thing the president asked us to do is he said, we have to alert this country to the new federalism or to the responsibility passing from Washington to the states and to the communities. And he said, I realize that our communities aren't structured to determine the real needs and then to find the necessary resources to do something about it. So the second thing that the task force has been trying to do is to alert the country to the fact that this is a new era, an era when you don't ask the federal government for help, but you try to find the resources within your own community. And the third thing is to be a catalyst to try to stimulate and encourage the development of partnerships throughout the country. Now that's what we're going to be talking to you about over the next so many hours. This is going to be a working meeting. It's one in which we're going to ask you to participate. We will show you how many communities have established partnerships, how organizations working with the public sector have established efforts in their community to solve difficult problems. Also, one of the things that is most important in our work is to find out what the true needs of a community might be. We believe strongly that the needs that once were thought to be important in the 60s and 70s and in many cases were determined by the government here in Washington may not be what the needs of a community are at this time. So we'll be talking about how communities have organized themselves to find out what their real needs are. So that we have looked forward to having this particular meeting because this is the first time that the task force has attempted, with a group such as you, to put out for you to see exactly how this effort has worked in different parts of the country. And we have some very successful examples to share with you tonight and tomorrow morning. Now the president will be down in just a few minutes. What we'd like to do is to hear from the president, who will tell you of his deep interest in private sector initiatives and in volunteerism. He will speak for about 10 minutes, and then he is going to mingle with us for another 10 or 15 minutes, hopefully with the opportunity to shake all of your hands. After the president leaves, will then be boarding some buses out here at this gate, and we'll all go together to the Madison Hotel, where we'll have dinner. And then our first working panel this evening and a talk by Tom Wyman, who will set the stage for our meeting. So that I will stop here and go meet the president and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. But I just wanted you to know how delighted we are that you're here, how we've looked forward to this get together with you. And I'm sure that any questions that you've had about the private sector initiative effort and how you can participate in it will be answered during these sessions. And many of you who called me and said, Bill, I'd like to help, how do I help? And you thought maybe you did it here in Washington. I want to convince you once more the action isn't in Washington. The action is back in your hometown or in your corporation. So I'll be back in just a second. It's thank you very much. Thank you. Listen, I should be I should be applauding you for coming here since we're going to put the bite on you or twist your arm or something before we get through. I just had to think it's much more comfortable in here than it was this noon. We were lunching in here with the president of Cameroon who had a slight cold. So we turned off the air conditioning and opened all the windows. But well, thank you and welcome to the White House. The I know that Bill Verity and his staff have a full agenda set for you over the next 24 hours. I just wanted to thank you for coming and to tell you how important I think the work of Bill Verity and his task force is. We started this effort eight months ago. We've come a long way since then and yet we have a long way to go. That's why you're here today to understand a little more about what the task force is doing and where we're going from here. We also would like you to be our ambassadors of private sector initiative. I told Bill when we started this project that I didn't want a fancy report. I wanted him to go out and surface those private sector initiatives out there and encourage some people, other people to do the same. In short, we wanted action and judging from what he tells me, he's seeing around the country, we're getting it. Now, I understand that most of you are chief executive officers of your companies and or leaders of one kind or another in your communities. You and I both know that there's a lot of positive private sector activity happening out there, but that has to force needs your help in telling that story. Let me tell you about just one initiative. Last year I asked Bill Verity, president of the American Enterprise Institute and subcommittee chairman of the task force models committee to complete a study about current initiatives and new alternative approaches to meeting human needs without federal funds. Well, the book is finished and it is a book and it has many examples which might be applicable in your own communities. Also, I understand that Bill's task force, that project bank now has over 600 examples from around the country of private initiative and volunteer projects that are at work today. I know you're going to be hearing more about that later, but if I could ask you to do one thing, it would be to begin a dialogue in your communities about different approaches to solving community problems. I know that some of you are already doing this and I hope the next 24 hours will be helpful to you. Bill and his staff are doing some very exciting things which you'll be hearing about. I know some people have been very critical, maybe I should say cynical. They've been around Washington too long and so they think that you must have a gimmick any time you suggest something and what they've tried to indicate is that by appealing to the private sector, I'm trying to get a substitute for government to take over welfare and a few things of that kind. Well, that isn't the idea at all. It's just the idea that for many years I got around the country on the mashed potato circuit in the business that I used to be in, if you didn't sing or dance, you wound up as an after-dinner speaker. So I've done chicken and peas in just about every state in the union, but I was struck then because I was talking then about whether government wasn't growing beyond the consent of the governed and whether government wasn't taking on too much and this great America that had once been built on the neighbors building a fellow's barn when it burned down and harvesting his crop if he happened to be sick or injured and so forth. If we hadn't fallen into a bad habit of saying well you know well that's the government's job let them do it and if we weren't losing something, I spoke to a lady from another country in this dining room not too long ago at a dinner and we were talking about some things and she said well yes in America you'd do that and she was indicating that not anyplace else that that's an American characteristic about people rallying. How many of us have seen in in the paper the story of the fellow and the whether it's a catastrophic illness or an injury or something that's really going to wipe them out because there's no program that can take care of it or insurance that covers it and all of a sudden a committee in town is formed and money starts being raised. I remember in Los Angeles once it was a man whose wife had died of cancer but he kept right on he was over in the Mexican-American community with his 13 children and raising them and taking care of them and then one day he didn't set the break enough on his truck and as he went around in the front the truck crushed him against a wall 13 orphan children and that lasted just about long enough for the story to be read in the papers and the next thing you know there was a committee formed there was a bank account set up the neighbors started showing up and 13 kids found out that in this country you're not alone. Just the other day I was in St. Louis I was invited to go to a boys club called the Matthews Dickie Club. I didn't know what I was just exactly one I just pictured a kind of a boys club and maybe it'd be in a room like this about 20 years ago two men in a community in St. Louis mostly black as they are just thought something ought to be done for the kids and they started gathering the kids together and trying to put together say a ball team and as they put it in the shade of the nearest tree then finally they moved up to where they were able to take over a little old storefront but the other day I stood in the gymnasium and I spoke in a multimillion dollar building which is the Matthews Dickie Club with those two men on the platform beside me only 20 years took for this I was speaking to 2,000 members of that club and many of their parents and behind me all in uniforms were 65 baseball teams that are part of that club and that they sponsor all ages from this size on up to getting teenagers and they've produced some major league players well it was an inspiring an inspiring afternoon and I kept looking at these two men and thinking what must have kept them going in the face of all the obstacles in their way and beyond them sitting up to the side in the grand in the stands was the board of directors or trustees now of that club and it was a mix of some of the top citizens most successful people in St. Louis who joined on when they found out there was something they could do to help while I was there a man from Kansas City gave me a letter which I'm going to pass on to bill because it just don't he just told me it's a whole list in his letter of the projects that a group of business leaders in Kansas City have created now some in layers on with government local state or whatever it might be partnerships like New York's partnership New York I understand that partnership they formed a couple of years ago has 18,000 jobs for young people from the disadvantaged areas summer jobs for them 12,000 of them have already been filled in their work and I'm getting the other 6,000 jobs filled that's what this private initiative thing is all about until there be one day if my dream comes true when there'll be so much doing that if government sticks its nose in you'll say what are they doing here it government's got a lot of legitimate functions and we're trying to make them perform and perform well and we'll stick with them and we just want to see America be America again in the way it was and that's why you're here and Bill and his group are going to be telling you about some of the things they've learned and some of the things that are that are going on the stories from all over the country are are just unbelievable and if you think at every level you find the right individuals I got a letter the other day from a man who has 10 a family of 10 he's just lost his job but he wrote me to tell me that he thinks that we're doing the right thing in trying to curb government spending and everything and he said I just thought that you'd like to hear from somebody that has got some problems but figures that he'll be able to handle them in the normal way and he won't be asking the government for help and I walked out of the office two inches taller after I read that letter but God bless you for coming and now I'm going to turn you over to those who'll find out ways to enlist your activities