This year marks the ninth annual celebration of the National Observance of Children's Sabbaths, a weekend of worship, education, outreach, and advocacy that proclaims and responds to the faith-based call to meet the needs of children.

If this is your first time participating in the Children's Sabbath, we are delighted that you are joining in this nationwide movement and trust that you will find it an inspiring and energizing experience for you congregation. If you are a long-time Children's Sabbath participant, we are grateful for your continued witness on behalf of children.

What is the Children's Sabbath?
The National Observance of Children's Sabbaths is an opportunity for people of all ages and all faiths to learn more about the urgent needs of children. Through worship services, religious education classes, and congregational outreach and advocacy activities, people of faith learn more about the problems facing children and commit to responding to them. The goal of the Children's Sabbath is to generate new, long-term efforts to meet children's needs by raising awareness, serving children directly, and advocating on children's behalf.

The Children's Sabbath begins across the nation on Friday with services in synagogues and mosques, and continues through Sunday with church and interfaith worship services. Many Children's Sabbaths are held by individual congregations, while in some communities congregations unite for ecumenical and interfaith celebrations of the Children's Sabbath.

The Children's Sabbath is an intergenerational event that engages people of all ages in planning, participation, and follow-up activities. In this respect, it is different from a traditional "Youth Sunday" that is entirely planned and led by the young people. The focus on serious problems facing children and needed responses also sets it apart from traditional children's days.

What is the 2000 Children's Sabbath theme?
The 2000 Children's Sabbath, Joining Hearts, Hands, and Voices to Leave No Child Behind, focuses on giving all children the Healthy Start, Head Start, Fair Start, Safe Start, and Moral Start they need and deserve. It addresses the millions of children being left behind without health insurance, in need of quality early childhood and school experiences, in poverty, at risk of violence in their homes, schools, and communities, and adrift without moral guidance and grounding from parents and other concerned adults. The Children's Sabbath affirms the role that parents, congregations, schools, communities, and our nation all have to play in ensuring that no child is left behind.

When is the Children's Sabbath held?
The Children's Sabbath, designated for the third weekend of each October, falls on October 20-22, 2000. If your congregation is unable to celebrate it on this date, however, select an alternate one. What's most important is devoting a time to highlight the needs of children and our responsibility to respond.

Why does the Children's Defense Fund sponsor the Children's Sabbath?
From its inception, CDF has recognized the importance of the faith community's partnership in building a movement to Leave No Child Behind. A nation that lets its children be the poorest citizens has at its heart a spiritual and ethical crisis. Thus, the religious community must help to transform our nation's priorities so that we defend those who are youngest, weakest, poorest, and most vulnerable. For many years CDF worked to support denominations and religious organizations as they developed child advocacy initiatives and campaigns. Eventually, the time was ripe to launch a weekend that would coalesce these efforts into a united moral witness for children that crosses all lines of geography, faith tradition, race, and ethnicity.

Today, countless children are being left behind. More than 11 million children without health insurance aren't getting a Healthy Start in life. The obstacles of cost, quality, and availability mean that some of the 13 million preschoolers cared for by someone other than their parents aren't getting a Head Start. The 5 million children left home alone after school aren't getting a Head Start either. The 13.5 million American children living in poverty aren't getting a Fair Start in life. The children gunned down at a rate of one every two hours in our nation aren't getting a Safe Start. And countless children adrift in a culture of materialism, racism, violence, and self-concern without the guidance and support of parents and other caring adults, congregations, and communities aren't getting a Moral Start in life.

On the Children's Sabbath, we will join our hearts, hands, and voices to see that no child is left behind. Together, we can work faithfully to give all children the start in life they need and deserve.

A Compact with America's Children
I. No child shall be hungry in America.
II. No child shall be homeless in America.
III. No child shall lack health care in America.
IV. No child shall be poor in America.
V. No child shall be unsafe in America.
VI. No child shall be illiterate or lack the education and skills needed to work and support a family in America.
VII. No child shall be left alone or in unsafe care when parents work in America.
VIII. No child will be abused, neglected, or exploited for personal or commercial gain in America.
IX. No child will be discriminated against because of race, poverty, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability in America.
X. Every child will be respected and protected by family, community, state, and nation as a citizen with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Action Agenda to Leave No Child Behind and to Ensure Every Child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in Life. At a time of great economic prosperity, a projected $1.9 trillion federal budget surplus over the next decade, and billions of state surplus and tobacco settlement dollars in a post-Cold War era, now is the time to end immoral and preventable child poverty, hunger, homelessness, and sickness in the richest nation on earth. Now is the time to stand up and show our children we truly value them. Now is the time to build a more just and compassionate and less violent society -- one in which no child is left behind. Together the nation, states, communities, employers, parents, and citizens must:

Ensure every child a Healthy Start. There are 11.9 million uninsured children in America; 90 percent of them live in working families. Seven million are currently eligible for health care under the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicaid. Nearly 5 million are not covered under any program. We must:

• Mount a massive and urgent campaign to reach and enroll every one of the 7 million children now eligible for CHIP and Medicaid.
• Simplify and unify application and eligibility procedures to make it easier rather than harder for children to get health care.
• Expand health coverage to every uninsured child and their parents.
• Encourage employees to expand coverage for employees and their children and stop dropping dependent coverage.
• Urge every community network -- religious, health care, parents, senior citizens, education, grassroots, youth, and corporations -- to join in a massive and persistent public awareness and enrollment campaign until every child is provided appropriate health care.

Ensure every child a Head Start.
Only 50 percent of children eligible for Head Start and only 10 percent of children eligible for federal child care assistance receive it. Five million school-age children are home alone after school and are at risk for tobacco, alcohol and drug use, teen pregnancy, and violence. Quality preschool, child care, after-school and summer programs, and school systems are essential to getting all children ready to learn and achieve and keeping them safe when parents are in the work force.

• Head Start should be increased to serve 1 million children in 2000 and all eligible children by 2002, and it should be expanded to full-day, full-year, and to more children under three years old.
• The Child Care and Development Block Grant should be increased by $817 million in 2000 and expanded to reach at least half of all eligible children by 2002.
• Congress should support a new Early Learning initiative for very young children and significantly increase investments in the 21st Century Community Learning Programs and other quality after-school and summer programs.
• Every state should provide a quality comprehensive pre-kindergarten program for all families who wish to participate and invest more state dollars in quality child care and Head Start programs.
• Every business should offer affordable quality child care, flex-time, and paid parental leave options to help employees balance work and family responsibilities.
• Federal and state family and medical leave laws should be expanded and strengthened to include paid leave.
• Every child should be expected and helped to achieve in quality, equitable school systems.

Ensure Every Child a Fair Start.
Thirteen and a half million children are poor; 74 percent of them live in working families; 5.8 million of them live in extreme poverty in families with incomes below $6,500. They often suffer hunger and homelessness, and lack other basic necessities. A majority of poor children are white and live outside central cities, although over one-third of Black and Hispanic children are poor. Our nation must commit to doing whatever is necessary to end child poverty in America by 2005. Children should get a fair share of the federal and state budget surpluses, tobacco settlement monies, and be guaranteed the same income and health security as senior citizens. We must:

• Ensure work at a decent wage and education and training for parents to improve their job options and earnings.
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), particularly for families with three or more children, increase the Dependent Care Tax Credit (DCTC) and the Child Tax Credit for lower and middle-income working and stay-at-home parents, and make both credits refundable.
• Make sure that every poor family with children currently eligible for nutrition, health, housing, child care, and other assistance gets them.
• Strengthen child support enforcement.

Ensure Every Child a Safe Start.
Over 80,000 American children have been killed by guns since 1979 -- a greater casualty rate than we suffered in battle casualties in the Vietnam War. American children under 15 are 12 times more likely to die from guns than children in 25 other industrialized nations combined. A child is reported abused or neglected every 12 seconds. Children are exposed to relentless glorification of violence on movie, television, and Internet screens.

• All gun purchasers and owners should be required to register and obtain a license.
• All non-hunting firearms including junk guns and assault weapons should be banned.
• Manufacturers and other adults should be held liable for guns that get into the hands of criminals and children.
• Parents should be educated about the dangers of owning a gun and required to store them locked and secure when they do.
• Cultural leaders, movie, television, and Internet producers, advertisers, and toy manufacturers should stop glorifying and marketing violence which incites some children to violence and desensitizes others to the consequences of violence.
• Nonviolence training, conflict resolution, peer mediation, and other activities to prevent all forms of family violence should be instilled in our homes, congregations, schools, and every sphere of national life.

Ensure Every Child a Moral Start.
It is time for American adults to stop our moral hypocrisy and to live the values we want our children to learn. If we want them to stop being violent, then we should stop being violent. If we want them to be honest, then we should be honest. Parents, preachers, teachers, and all public officials must conduct themselves in a waythat they would want their own child or any child to emulate. Our children need consistent love, time, attention, discipline, family stability, and limits at home and in school, and they need to see that adults in their nation, private sector, and communities value and care for them -- not as customers and future consumers to be exploited or as a non-voting group to be ignored -- but as the heirs of America's institutions and values. It is time for all adults to accept their responsibility to be good protectors of and mentors for the next generation.