As the National Urban League celebrates our centennial year and launches a blueprint for civil rights and economic opportunity in our second century, we’ve asked Americans to join us in making a pledge.

The pledge can be found at www.iamempowered.com, our groundbreaking social mobilization platform that connects and inspires the Urban League community around the globe. While the pledge also focuses on opportunities in education, housing and health care, I believe the  one issue that rises above all others at this moment in history is jobs. During our Centennial Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, we will be having an ongoing, substantive dialogue about job creation and the best ways to confront the employment crisis in the nation. These include Wednesday’s workshop, “The Prosperity Promise: A Plan to Put Urban America Back to Work,” and Thursday’s workshop, “Where are the Jobs? Small and Minority-Owned Business Opportunities in the New Green Economy.”

The National Urban League has a plan to directly create three million jobs by providing assistance to cities, states, school districts and public universities, community colleges and community-based organizations.

These efforts must be targeted on the areas of highest unemployment, where the need is greatest, and which in many cases are the neighborhoods where the clients of Urban League affiliates reside.

We’ve called for Green Empowerment Zones and Technology Empowerment Zones, which are designed to attract green and technology private sector jobs to inner cities and the areas of the highest unemployment.

In order to create jobs and inspire a new generation of African-American entrepreneurs, we’ve called on the Small Business Administration would reduce its interest rate to one percent, to assist start-ups and small businesses looking to create jobs through expansion, and we’ve challenged the banks and the investment banks to improve access to capital for this new generation of African-American entrepreneurs.Through the creation of Urban Jobs Academies, which foster the expansion of the Urban Youth Empowerment Program, we can train and prepare struggling men and women for these jobs.

We must fight back against the almost 50 percent teenage unemployment rate by establishing a new, year-round, teenage jobs program to supplant the Youth Summer Jobs Program.

The nation’s economic recovery depends upon a commitment to creating family-sustaining jobs and the education and training to prepare for them. We ask the nation to join us in working toward the goal of access for every American to jobs with a living wage and good benefits. Make the pledge at www.iamempowered.com