George Kaiser is a believer in early childhood education as a way to stop poverty in America.

The Tulsa billionaire shared his thoughts Thursday at a luncheon sponsored by Smart Start Northwest Oklahoma, an initiative of Community Dev-elopment Support Association, and Enid Public Schools.

Oklahoma’s Children: Our Future Starts Today addressed issues having an impact on economic growth and work force development in Enid and the state. A tour of early childhood sites preceded the luncheon.

Smart Start Northwest Ok-lahoma is active in early learning initiatives for children. Paula Waters, director, said the early years of life, before age 6, provide a window of opportunity for healthy mental, physical and emotional growth to nurture healthy and productive members of the community.

Kaiser told the audience at Northwestern Oklahoma State University-Enid sensory stimulation at the earliest possible point in life is the most important things we can do to provide equal opportunity in our society.

“I have felt all of my life that we all got where we are by dumb luck, that we have a moral obligation to share our random advantage with those who didn’t win the ovarian lottery and that the purest form of charity is one which intervenes in the cycle of poverty at the earliest possible stage, through nutrition, health care and housing. Equal opportunity is really the social contract of life,” he said.

Kaiser watched in the 1960s as the U.S. spent trillions of dollars on the War on Poverty, but after 40 years he said poverty still is winning the war. Kaiser said we are dealing with the symptoms of poverty but not rooting out and modifying the cause, and each generation starts out about where the last one did.

One theoretical discovery and one practical one have furthered his knowledge of the problem, Kaiser said. Theoretically, research on stem cells seems to show cells from the brain could be placed in the heart, liver or kidney and function there.

Eighty-five percent of brain development occurs by age 3, but only 4 percent of educational dollars are spent by then, Kaiser said. People can rise above the condition from which they derived, he said, by intensive sensory stimulation of the unformed brain cells at the earliest possible point.

Kaiser also discussed some programs that are working well in America, including the Beethoven Project, out of which EduCare grew, and others that made a difference in the lives of its participants 20 and 30 years later. Common characteristics of those programs that made them work, he said, include early entry, preferably within the first few months after birth; trained, skilled teachers who understand how infant brains receive, absorb and process information; and family support services.

The Kaiser Family Foun-dation, which he started, is focused on early intervention in the cycle of poverty, public health and Tulsa civic enhancement.

Diane Juhnke, early childhood coordinator for Com-munity Development Support Association, said waiting to invest in early childhood education is a missed opportunity.

She urged those attending to spread the word about joining Smart Start Northwest Oklahoma and becoming a member of the coalition.

“We must work together to develop and implement plans to impact children and their families,” she said. “No one solution will get us where we need to go in terms of a strong future work force.”

She also called for support of CDSA’s early childhood center, and support the Parents as Teachers initiative, which was started in Enid.

She also urged adopting an early care or early childhood program in public schools.

Information provided by Smart Start shows 4,121 children under age 5 live in Garfield County, according to 2005 census estimates, and 42 percent of mothers giving birth in the county are unmarried. It is estimated 59 percent of the children in Garfield County under the age 5 live in a home where either a single parent or both parents are employed away from home.

Grandparents are the primary care provider for one-third of Oklahoma’s toddlers.