And it strikes at the core of inclusion by helping to build the organizational capacity of those organizations educating and developing young people living in low-income areas of the region. The social venture fund we are proposing creates the venue through which we can benefit from the wealth and talent of the new and traditional business leadership and our knowledge of how the Internet can be an agent to transform processes, markets and systems. By so doing, we will help improve the services for young people of our low-income areas, while helping make philanthropic giving and the nonprofit sector more effective. Investing in the future of our region is an investment in your own future, as well as that of your business, your children and their children. But formidable challenges in transportation, education, sprawl, environmental erosion and economic disparity lie in the wings threatening to curtail this prosperity.
Great leaders are inspirational in bad times and paranoid about success in the good times.
We should savor these good times, but let's not allow the heady success of the New Economy blind us to the problems we face. It is during these good times that we should be paranoid about our future. We must come together as the National Capital region to solve the challenges that threaten to limit our future prosperity and quality of life. Let us be truly civic leaders, leaders who can and will make the National Capital region the global center of the New Economy a reality by 2005 and one that benefits everyone who calls this region home. We have the chance to be the region that gets it right.