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Children’s Defense Fund Founder, Governor to Speak

For Immediate Release March 7, 2007

Marian Wright Edelman, nationally renowned child advocate and founder of the Children’s Defense fund, will speak at the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth’s 19th annual Children’s Advocacy Days. The event will be held at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville on March 13-14.

“The Class of 2025: Looking Forward to a New Future,” this year’s program, will focus on what can be done today to make the world a better place for children being born in 2007 by the time they graduate from high school. Gov. Phil Bredesen will speak before Edelman on the Wednesday, March 14, agenda.

Rev. Edwin Sanders, minister of the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church and well-known Nashville advocate, will kick off the event on Tuesday, March 13. Reports from representatives of state agencies serving children will follow his presentation. Kim McMillan, senior advisor to the governor and former state House of Representatives majority leader, will conclude the program on day one.

The 19th annual meeting of child advocates will provide participants with an opportunity to learn more about what they can do to become better advocates for children, to network with others and to interact with legislators.

The Making KIDS COUNT Media Award and the Jim Pryor Child Advocacy Award will be announced on March 14.

Edelman, the first African-American woman to be admitted to the Mississippi bar, has spent her life speaking up for America’s children. She began the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973 and has been a tireless advocate ever since. She is a winner of the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her prolific writing earned her the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award.

However, it is her support for public policies to make children’s lives healthier and their futures brighter that make her the perfect speaker for Children’s Advocacy Days, an event designed to educate citizens on how to make their voices heard on behalf of children.

The Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth is an independent agency created by the Tennessee General Assembly. Its primary mission is to advocate for improvements in the quality of life for Tennessee children and families. For more information and to register, contact TCCY at (615) 741-2633 or visit the agency website at www.tennessee.gov/tccy/cad.htm.