More can help keep the promise

We have a promise to keep.

It’s simple, really: We promise to protect and nurture our community’s children.

Last April, nearly all local news organizations, setting aside traditional competitive pressures, pledged to devote their time, energy and resources to the promise.

Last April, dozens of area nonprofit organizations, government agencies and law enforcement departments, in an unprecedented collaboration, stepped up to the promise.

Last April, thousands of Inland Northwest residents pledged to do one thing in the coming year to fulfill the promise.

And all of this happened under the pall cast by the fresh-in-our-memories torture death of little Summer Phelps. The Spokesman-Review dedicated the first year of Our Kids: Our Business to Summer’s memory.

Now, 12 months later, we’re back with year two of this media/community project. We can assess the region’s progress and highlight the challenges still to be met.

As reporter Kevin Graman notes elsewhere in today’s paper, there has been progress. New resources. New programs. The loose collaboration of public and private agencies devoted to community action has taken on more structure and is better positioned to implement new ideas.

The media partnership has expanded. This year, the message of Our Kids: Our Business should reach every corner of our region.

Where there were pockets of apathy last year, there is a sense of urgency. Many who believed child abuse and neglect is not “our problem,” now know better. Those who feared the problem is so substantial it defies solution have come to think otherwise. We can do this.

This April, Our Kids: Our Business will focus less on stories that define the problem, the horror stories of child abuse and neglect that are far too common in our region. We’ll spend more time looking at programs that work, agencies that have stepped up, solutions in place, solutions within our grasp.

But our community partners also will challenge key segments of the community to play a larger role.

Isn’t it time for real leadership to emerge from the region’s business community? One of the central tenets of Our Kids: Our Business is that protecting and nurturing our children is good for business, good for economic development, good for job growth. Shouldn’t business leaders begin to trumpet that message?

Isn’t it time for the region’s clergy to deliver the message of Our Kids: Our Business to their congregations?

Isn’t it time for the region’s educators to more aggressively teach children about abuse and neglect, and give them the tools they need to protect themselves and their friends?

As we did last year, this newspaper again will ask the region’s residents to sign a pledge, to promise to do one thing in the coming year to help protect and nurture young people.

All of this will happen under the pall cast by yet another tragedy, the apparent murder of 6-month-old Nevaeh Alana Miller, allegedly at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. Nevaeh’s death came more quickly than Summer’s. She didn’t suffer the years of abuse and torture. But her death is no less shocking and must be no less compelling.

For the too-many dead children, but also for the countless children for whom abuse and neglect inflicts unimaginable suffering – and for which the community pays in so many ways – Our Kids: Our Business was launched.

And this year, we do it for Nevaeh.