Last week, while catching up on my This American Life podcasts, I listened to a story from 2008 about Geoffrey Canada's work in Harlem. He had noticed that the things most middle-class, suburban parents know about raising children were nowhere to be found in inner city families. He wondered whether the secret for breaking the cycle of poverty could actually be teaching inner city parents about raising and educating children and providing children better educational experiences. So, he started the
Harlem Children's Zone. In 1997, HCZ brought programs to a 24-block area in Harlem, and the project grew to 100 blocks in 2007. Today, the project serves more than 8,000 and 6,000 adults and includes Baby College, which works with parents and their newborns, Harlem Gems, a preschool program, and the Promise Academy, a public charter school. The organization also provides programs to help people manage their asthma and fight obesity. When the first kids in the program took their assessment tests, they ranked above the state average, which shows that the program could be working. The hope is that the kids in these programs will graduate from high school, perhaps go to college, and delay parenthood until they are financially and mentally ready to be parents. And when they do become parents, hopefully they will employ the same child-rearing techniques their parents learned and used.
The program is old news by now - Sunday Morning featured it last year, Geoffrey Canada was on The Colbert Report, and while preparing the FY2010 budget, President Obama proposed including $10 million for the 20 Promise Neighborhoods program, which will replicate the HCZ program in 20 cities across the country. But it's worth talking about again and again, because this new model could be the approach that actually works for fighting poverty.
For more information about the program and its success, start first with Act One from the
Going Big podcast, and then read the book written by the podcast's narrator, Paul Tough, called
Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America.
