Harlem Children's Zone

Harlem Children’s Zone at http://www.hcz.org/

This organization began in 1970 as a truancy-prevention program.  Through the 1980’s and 1990’s the crack epidemic was a problem in Harlem HCZ’s staff developed new approaches to help these families.  In 1991 HCZ turned a public school into a community center offering a range of services and activities on nights, weekends and summers.   In the early 1990’s HCZ ran a pilot project that brought a range of support services to a single block.  They addressed all the problems that poor families were facing:  from crumbling apartments to failing schools, from violent crime to chronic health problems.    In 1997 the agency began a network of programs for a 24 block area the Harlem Children’s Zone Project.  In 2007 the zone project grew to almost 100 blocks.  Today the Children’s Zone serves more than 8,000 children and 6,000 adults.  Overall, the organization serves more than 10,000 children and more than 7,400 adults .  Over the years the agency introduced several ground-breaking efforts in 2000 the Baby College parenting workshops in 2001 the Harlem Gems pre-school program and the HCZ Asthma initiative, which teaches families to better manage the disease.  In 2004, the Promise Academy a high quality public charter school and in 2006, an obesity program to help children stay healthy.   HCZ aims at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and families it serves.

I listened to an interview CNN had with the CEO, Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone entitled Education and the American Dream.  One of the things he said in this interview is that children today are not getting the education that their parents received.  He feels that education is failing today due to lack of innovation.  What he is saying is that the education experience to day is the same as it was years ago, nothing has changed.  He feels that what is required of this generation is much more than previous generations and change is necessary for Education to work.  I think that with the changing demographics this is also an issue.  Education needs to go through some change because the clientele is different  now than in years ago and we as Educators need to address the new issues in educating our children.