Last week, I thought that we had managed our way soberly, but successfully, through another anniversary of 9/11, with all of its remembrances.  This bookmark in our country’s story recalls also days in my offices on the 23rd floor of Two World Trade Center, during the 70s.  I was employed by the New State Division for Youth as Director of Training for New York City.  At the early beginning of my career, I was full of the same stamina, confidence, and steel-like vision that the majestic towers also symbolized.  We were going to transform the system which served the city’s most challenged, delinquent, and violent youth. In retrospect, we did make a positive difference for many youths, even if the towers are now a tragic memorial.

But as I awoke to the breaking news that  9/11 this year was not uneventful, and that four Americans were killed in a consulate on the other side of  the world, one a former Peace Corps tutor who loved this foreign culture, I realized that 9/11 may have been muted, but not over.

When I was a child, the basic message was: “Children are to be seen, not heard.” In my generation, most often, we were not allowed to participate in adult conversations, but we did manage somehow to take in our parents’ and community’s sense of hope for better times, for the future of their children, for peace and justice, and for a better quality of life.  I wonder now what our children today are taking in.  This generation is so much less protected from our adult preoccupations, as media reports are so much more accessible to them. Do they experience vicariously the increased levels of adult uncertainty, and profound, heightened sense of vulnerability to our neighbors, both here and abroad? Do they know that their parents worry about whether they can keep them safe from terror, anywhere, or whether they will be able to support their children’s academic and economic success in a changing world context?

We may never put full closure on 9/11 in our lifetime, yet, in our anxiousness, and unwittingly,  we should not leave a legacy of loss to the next generation. After all, There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow. (Orison Swett Marden, He Can Who Thinks He Can). Today, children are not only seen and heard, but they hear us loud and clear.  And their response?  I think it is most important that we convey a legacy of hope to the younger generations: Tomorrow will be better only if we believe enough to achieve it!

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Author

Name: Dr. Sheryl Brissett Chapman

About: Dr. Sheryl Brissett Chapman, Executive Director, is a passionate, internationally recognized and award-winning advocate for children, youth, and their families, who struggle with extreme poverty, abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and disabilities and related trauma. An author and expert in child and family welfare, she believes in the sheer power of “community” as it reinforces unimaginable resilience when it provides the basic support to those in its midst who have need. Dr. Chapman envisions a healthy, happy childhood for each and every child, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or the socio-economic status of their family.

ABOUT US

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Founded in 1915 as an orphanage in the District of Columbia, NCCF is a private, nonprofit child and family welfare agency with a commitment to serving poor, disadvantaged, abused, neglected and/or abandoned children, youth, and their families.

Current program services include emergency shelters and transitional housing for homeless families, a high-intensity therapeutic group home, therapeutic and traditional foster care and adoption, independent living for youth transitioning to adulthood, teen parent services, and community-based prevention services that promote academic achievement, parental involvement, economic and vocational stability, and healthy families. Our programs have become social service models, redefining both NCCF’s reputation and the agency’s position in the human service continuum in the Washington Metropolitan Region.

blog-sidebar-aboutUs-logo

Founded in 1915 as an orphanage in the District of Columbia, NCCF is a private, nonprofit child and family welfare agency with a commitment to serving poor, disadvantaged, abused, neglected and/or abandoned children, youth, and their families.

Current program services include emergency shelters and transitional housing for homeless families, a high-intensity therapeutic group home, therapeutic and traditional foster care and adoption, independent living for youth transitioning to adulthood, teen parent services, and community-based prevention services that promote academic achievement, parental involvement, economic and vocational stability, and healthy families. Our programs have become social service models, redefining both NCCF’s reputation and the agency’s position in the human service continuum in the Washington Metropolitan Region.

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