And so it was in Philadelphia. Presidents and First Ladies called upon governors and mayors and corporate CEOs not only to commit themselves and their organizations to the future of the nation's children, but to galvanize a massive outpouring of citizen energy around their lofty purposes. This was a summit that aimed to be more than a one-shot event. Or as Summit Chairman Colin Powell repeatedly stressed, "The real work begins back home in your communities."
Weeks have gone by since the mountaintop gathering, so it seems appropriate to take a first look at its aftermath. Conversations with dozens of summit participants, and visits to a number of cities that sent delegations to Philadelphia, have produced three initial impressions.
First, there is significant follow-up activity in at least some states and local communities. Virginia, for example, hosted its own day-long "summit" for hundreds of folks, who heard from the state's two delegations, from Richmond and Virginia Beach. Statewide conclaves like Virginia's can serve at least two purposes--they can align and connect the state's various child and family-centered departments with each other, and with local county, municipal, and community counterparts; and they can begin to catalyze a statewide network of communities to help inform each other's work, share best practices, etc.
Most of the 100 municipalities that sent delegations to Philadelphia are following up as they promised, with local "mini-summits" of their own. Understandably, these promises of convening across sectors and local geographic boundaries seem much more powerful and potentially useful in smaller or mid-sized cities--Savannah, Fresno, or Charlotte, for example--than in Chicago or Detroit.
A second clear impression centers on the substantive focus of the summit, the commitment to a clearly articulated policy-and-action agenda focused on the well-being of young people. The five summit goals, widely publicized and endlessly repeated, capture many of the most promising ideas in the youth development field and package them in an easily digestible format. The core goals that every child is "entitled" to a healthy start, a safe environment, relationships with caring adults, and the opportunities to contribute to the community and to enter into the economy provide a usefully spare framework for the burgeoning field.
A third impression is more cautionary. Insofar as the summit aimed to expand significantly the number and kinds of people, groups, and resources committed to and actively involved in youth development activities, it is too soon to tell if it succeeded. In two critical sectors, commitments made to date appear modest at best. The private sector, well-represented by Fortune 500 CEOs in Philadelphia, has pledged a range of resources (employees' time perhaps the most significant), but most tend toward the not-too-costly and the symbolic. Small and mid-sized firms were hardly visible at all in Philadelphia, and are more susceptible to local than national efforts to involve them.
And finally, did the "citizens' summit" mobilize "ordinary" citizens? In a few communities, perhaps. But most of the non-government, non-CEO types who gathered in Philadelphia were the "usual suspects"--officials and leaders from the national youth-serving agencies and philanthropies, committed people whose job descriptions include attendance at all major conferences, especially "summits."
So that, finally, is the major limitation of life at the mountaintop. It is terribly difficult to find or create space for neighbors, for block captains, for congregational leaders, for the very people whose commitments are most critical. General Powell is right--the real action is back home, in the valleys.
John (Jody) Kretzmann is co-director of IPR's Asset-Based Community Development Institute and an IPR research associate. He and ABCD co-director, John McKnight, are co-authors of Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets (1993)