Green Bay area organizers of a "regional economic summit" on early childhood health and education say the session accomplished its purpose of calling business leaders to action, and the challenge now is to follow up on the energy the summit generated.

"Forward with our Children: Investing Early in our Future Work Force," held Nov. 30 at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, was co-sponsored by two dozen local businesses and organizations, state agencies and national nonprofits. Featured speakers at the three-hour event included David Lawrence, former publisher of the Miami Herald who retired after 35 years of newspapering to become an advocate for making young children's well-being a community priority. More than 350 people attended.

"The goal is to attract business people and help them understand their future work force is dependent on what we do for our children now," Lawrence said. He cited studies that indicate the first few years of a child's life are the most important in terms of intellectual, social and emotional development. A substantial excerpt from his speech is published on this page.

Sarah Inman, community impact manager of Brown County United Way, said the reaction from attendees was very positive.

"If you work in the human services, these things are kind of second nature in terms of the knowledge base," Inman said. "But if you work in the business community, it's an entirely different story, so we're really excited by the initial feedback."

Rose Smits, executive director of Encompass Early Education and Care, said numerous long-term studies show the value of early childhood intervention and the devastating impact when children do not get appropriate care early on.

"They can't make it up," Smits said. "If they have never been read to, and have a very limited vocabulary in their home during those key windows of time, it's almost not going to happen, and that's frightening."

Sue Vincent, chief operations officer at Encompass, said opportunities lost early in life can be made up with extensive remedial education later in life. She cited oft-quoted research that suggests a dollar spent on early childhood education saves $7 or $8 later for such needs as foster care, remedial education, teen parent programs, juvenile court costs and adult corrections.

School systems and other educational institutions now spend more money as children grow into high school and college, while the research indicates investing in the early years will likely produce the best results, Smits said. But it's not about putting the youngest kids in a formal school setting.

"I think you'd be surprised to see the most appropriate ways to work with young children," Smits said. "A lot of it has to do with manipulation — talking one-on-one — in (Lawrence's) speech the focus was on that interaction between the child and the caregiver. It isn't sitting in front of the TV watching passively; it's talking back and forth and using the language and responding to the child's needs."

Vincent said parents play a key role, of course, but a surprising number of parents need help understanding how children learn.

"Taking a walk and talking about birds and the animals they see and the sounds they hear," Vincent said. "Reading to your child 20 minutes a day before bed not only builds that nurturing and that caring, it also teaches them that words describe something in a picture, and things go left to right, and all those things that are building those (reading) skills."

The United Way launched a Community Partnership for Children in 2005, aimed at getting in touch with new parents and helping them get linked up to available services, Inman said. The initiative envisioned at the summit would be broader in scope.

"The earlier we start as a community, and if we can come up with collaborative ways to target efforts as early as possible, children are going to be far better off early on in life, they won't have to make up those lost windows of opportunity," Inman said. "And in turn, the work force will be stronger, whether it's a person in a trades job or a job at a company, it'll all benefit the community in the end."

What's the next step?

"As a community we need to learn more about what is important for children and figure out what is the way this community can address this need — and it is going to be different in every community," Vincent said. "The needs are going to be different, resources are going to be different, so we (members of the community) have to design our plan. You can't know what to change unless you're educated about what the issues are and how we can best impact them."

Smits was impressed by how Miami and Dade County have rallied around the issue since Lawrence, a prominent business leader, made it his mission.

"I would like to see an emergent business leader take this up as a cause, somewhat the way Davis Lawrence has," she said. "That way it isn't a whole group of human service people again talking; it's someone who has been through the corporate world and the corporate ladder, speaking and saying, 'This is really important folks.'"