Meeting seeks solutions to family issues

• By KORAN ADDO
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 5, 2008 - Page: 1B

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What about the children?

That was the recurring theme Tuesday night during a town hall meeting hosted by the Equal Voice for Families Campaign at the McKinley Alumni Center.

State Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, a panelist,  spoke about a village in Africa where the traditional greeting is to ask, ‘How are the children doing?’

“A community is only doing as well as the children are doing,” said Broome, D-Baton Rouge.

Darryl Robertson, a member of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, stressed the need for adults to do more to support school-age children.

“We have to have support for the children during their daily routines; we need to be there for the children to help them prepare for those tests; and we have to be there for the children when they come home from school and need a place to study,” he said.

Robertson also spoke about the need for children to have structure to avoid the pitfalls and bad habits that prevent them from reaching their full potential.

“We need to be careful of the dream thieves,” he said. “Those obstacles that get in the way, and sidetrack our children. The things that steal their dreams.”

Other topics that were discussed and interwoven with the need to protect and support children included education, poverty, housing, health care, entrepreneurship, community service and having a concrete vision for the future.

Dozens of families packed into the center to discuss these issues affecting working-class families, those making less than $50,000 per year.

In one of the group sessions, Jeffrey Williams, who attended the forum with his wife, René, and their sons, Jeffrey 12, and Jabari, 7, said he is tired of just talking.

Williams, a minister at the United Kingdom Ministries in Gonzalez, said he brought his children so they can see adults trying to make a difference.

“We need a coalition to develop an action plan,” Williams said. “Not just talk, we need to see action.”