"The Harlem Children’s Zone is succeeding where so many have failed – interrupting chronic cycles of family poverty in an inner-city neighborhood. Its students are starting to close the achievement gap with middle-class kids, on a reliable basis. Harlem itself has become so appealing that gentrification threatens the Zone.
What’d they do right?"
In the early 1980s, the charismatic community-organizer Geoffrey Canada chose to get intimate with a place and concentrate only on its children. He’d taken over a little social service agency, determined to rescue kids from the brutal, mean-streets childhood he had in the Bronx. Starting with only a few city blocks, his Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) began to build, piece by piece, a cradle-to-career “pipeline” of services to help those particular kids succeed. Increasingly, the idea was to give them supports that middle-class kids take for granted — improving the nutrition of young pregnant moms, creating safe places to play, providing good schools.
What’d they do right?"
In the early 1980s, the charismatic community-organizer Geoffrey Canada chose to get intimate with a place and concentrate only on its children. He’d taken over a little social service agency, determined to rescue kids from the brutal, mean-streets childhood he had in the Bronx. Starting with only a few city blocks, his Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) began to build, piece by piece, a cradle-to-career “pipeline” of services to help those particular kids succeed. Increasingly, the idea was to give them supports that middle-class kids take for granted — improving the nutrition of young pregnant moms, creating safe places to play, providing good schools.
Its now famous “Baby College” uses Saturday morning classes to teach poor, young parents how to get their kids on track to college. Teachers explain how a baby’s brain develops, so parents understand the consequences of overly harsh discipline and the importance of reading. In other words, HCZ invests heavily in the people who support the kids.
The Zone grew, adding a few blocks at a time, to the 97-block phenomenon that has caught President Obama’s attention. The president wants it replicated.