USDA Secretary Dan Glickman

s we prepare to enter the 21st century, American communities face tough challenges that result from changes in technology and in the global marketplace. Many communities must now find new places in the economic system that allow them to prosper in the future as they have in the past. Still others face the additional challenge of breaking the cycle of poverty so that they, too, can share fully in the benefits of our democracy. These communities, whose challenges are the toughest, are the focus of the Presidential Empowerment Initiative.

This Initiative is a key element in our commitment to strengthening America's capacity to meet these challenges. By investing in American communities, we will help to break the cycle of poverty and create better lives for our citizens. But this Initiative is about more than investments. It is also an experiment--to find new methods that all American communities can use to meet the challenges of the coming century.

This site on the World Wide Web is a key to the success of this experiment. Here, communities participating in the Empowerment Initiative can meet to share their experiences and their ideas. Here, too, they will find information and tools to help them carry out their strategic plans. We hope that other communities will use this site as well, both to learn from this Initiative and to share their own experiences. We are proud of this site and the step it takes toward equalizing the flow of information to communities. We hope you will check it out, and let us know what you think.

Dan Glickman
Secretary of Agriculture
agsec@sies.wsc.ag.gov