Harlem Children's Zone Project Case Study

In Streetwise, Elijah Anderson (1990) discusses the social forces at work in an urban area he calls the Village-Northton. His is a sociological field study of the daily interactions between the residents of an area encompassing two communities--in his words, "one black and low income to very poor (with an extremely high infant mortality rate), [and] the other racially mixed but becoming increasingly middle to upper income and white" (Anderson, 1990, p. ix). In keeping with valid sociological fieldwork, Anderson (1990) immersed himself in the community from the summer of 1975 through the summer of 1989.

East Harlem is usually known for being a poor neighborhood. “In much social science literature on the neighborhood, Spanish Harlem is defined primarily by its poverty.” (Martinez).

The Harlem Children’s Zone is a community based education system started by Geoffrey Canada. His main goal with this program was to close the achievement gap between affluent and low-income children in Harlem and ensure that every student that attends the HCZ also attends college. His charter school, referred to as “ The Promise Academy,” is unique as it provides a high-performing academic program supplemented with a variety of social services including parenting classes, support system for former HCZ students who have enrolled in college, fitness programs, community centers, and an onsite-medical clinic. Children living in the inner city are historically low-performing students, because they are not worried about their grade on a test like

Although many years has past, the Harlem Children’s Zone has developed a plan of action in one of the most devastated neighborhood in America. An adjacency with a child poverty rate greater the national average, the program is intended to reduce to the smallest possible degree the threat of

Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy II high school is a charter school in the middle of Harlem, New York. The students come from areas all over the five boroughs and even New Jersey to become a part of the HCZ organization. The school promises that if the students stay in school they will graduate and go to college. Students and parents will go to great lengths to win the lottery system that allows them entry to the school.

The DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) draws upon promising practices from a national body of work that suggest that dual-generation programming is an effective strategy for breaking the cycle of poverty. Specifically, two-generation strategies that suggest integrating education, employment opportunities, and peer support for parents and academic and support services for their children will produce far more promising outcomes for both the parents and their child.

The overview of these three programs and attaining them is optimal, essentially a cycle of opportunity. By providing these services it develops a base for a long-term goal of achieving self-sufficiency and out of poverty. However, the accessibility of these beneficial resources may be difficult to obtain based on eligibility. New ideas that may help improve or reduce disparities in future programs can begin by concentrating on and expanding educational resources. For instance, a program that holds educational sessions on a monthly base, targeting communities, informing families of available resources and assisting with the application process. Another idea would be collaborating with the school system, specifically low-income based communities. After school program can be initiated to target parents that need assistance with extra resources and services. Lastly, innovating a classroom setting program for the duration of one-year, furthering educational and leadership ability for

Communication within the Westside School District No. 5 between the school district and the communities and families that it serves is a very dynamic process. I talked with district administrators, community members, researched pertinent information in the Arkansas State University library, and various governmental online sources and found very helpful information to include in this sociological inventory. Westside Consolidated School District No. 5 is a consolidation of primarily three school districts Bono, Cash and Egypt located in Craighead County, Arkansas in 1966 (Westside, 2017). The district also includes parts of Walnut Ridge and Alicia in Lawrence County and parts of Jonesboro in Craighead County. The district has three school buildings housing students from pre-Kindergarten through twelfth grade. The elementary school is the school for

The Promise zone initiative is designed to redevelop high poverty dominated areas through inclusive, evidence- based strategies and helping local leaders take the helm of federal funding. Due to disinvestment and poor policy implementation that isolated poor, have contributed to areas of concentrated poverty all over the country. The Promise Zones initiative will revitalize high poverty communities across the country by attracting private investment, providing affordable housing, creating educational opportunities, providing tax incentives for hiring workers and reducing violent crime, and supporting local leaders in navigating federal programs. The economic nature of this policy is allocation of services and redistributing

James is an eleven year old child who is currently going into the seventh grade at the Harlem Success Charter School.

This summer I worked in New York City at Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), which is a non-profit organization for poverty-stricken children and families in Harlem, providing free support in the forms of parenting workshops, a pre-school program, three public charter schools, child-oriented health programs that serve approximately 13,705 children and 13,784 adults. The Harlem Children’s Zone Project has expanded the HCZ’s comprehensive system of programs to nearly 100 blocks of Central Harlem and aims to keep children on track throughout college and into the job market. The organization is made-up of about twenty two programs in total that ensure there are no gaps in-between one phase to the next. For instance if a student needs to take a year off before attending college, HCZ has created programs that will stick with the student during this time frame, in other words providing these students with a strong support group so they are held accountable to attend college in the future. The HCZ is “aimed at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and

The association to benefit Children (ABC) is a social service agency in Harlem New York that serves underprivileged and at risk youth and teens. The Agency itself has three major components a daycare center, an after school program and a teen prevention/ retention program. Affecting change in the lives of children from low income and impoverished communities is at the core of ABC’s mission. ABC also works to foster educational importance from infancy to adolescence while providing a safe and caring environment where children could learn and grew. ABC’s

KidsPACK charity is entirely dedicated to feeding homeless and hungry children by giving them a backpack of nutritious food each Friday. The food they receive on Friday will sustain them on weekends when they don’t have access to school meals. All of our effort and focus is to contribute to the relief of homeless, poor and disadvantaged in our community.

We want the community that we are working with to have healthy and safe areas for their children to grow up in. We believe that our program will be able to provide those spaces. By allowing the children of the community to have areas that are geared towards them and their learning we hope to create a healthy relationship towards children and education. By lowering the crime rates we also hope to see less children joining in on the crime and more children joining in on education and success. Our programs are centered towards helping children find happiness and hope in education as well as helping those who are willing to to their involvement with crime. We offer those who are willing a helping hand in turning their lives around and a chance to better their community and it’s future. The public health of the community in Inglewood is a huge part of our program and we believe that our ideas, volunteers, and dedication can turn the community

About one in five children in the United States has the misfortune of living in a family whose income is below the official poverty threshold (Borman and Reimers 454). Poverty has harmful effects on a child’s academic outcomes, general health, development, and school readiness. The impact of poverty has on a child depends on many factors for instance community features ( crime rate in neighborhood and school characteristics) and the individuals present in the child’s life like their parents, neighbors, or relatives. It is clear that schools and outside environmental factors contribute to whether a child is successful or not in their academic life. A child’s family, neighborhood, and type of school effects that are related with poverty