Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) Holds 1st National Conference

The Obama Administration will soon launch a place-based initiative, Promise Neighborhoods, to address alleviating poverty and reducing many of the existing disparities that currently over-determine the lives of poor children in our country. The Promise Neighborhoods initiative is heavily influenced by the excellent work of the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City.

On November 9-10, 2009, HCZ held its first national conference: Changing the Odds: Learning from the Harlem Children's Zone Model. The conference brought together more than 1,400 practitioners, policymakers, funders, and leaders from 106 communities across the country, all united in their determination to break the cycle of poverty.

President Barack Obama's call for the creation of 20 "Promise Neighborhoods" modeled on the HCZ Project was a recurring theme among the several workshops and plenary sessions that occurred throughout the two-day conference. Angela Glover Blackwell, from conference partner PolicyLink said, "This is really the beginning of something."

"In the end it is those of us living in these communities that are going have to get this work done," said HCZ's President Geoffrey Canada to the packed Wright Edelman spoke about the terrible inequities facing poor children in the United States, noting that more children are killed by guns than are policemen in the line of duty. Talking about Promise Neighborhoods, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said HCZ "provides a roadmap of how to do it right."

Selected remarks and three reports prepared for the meeting can be reviewed:

• Remarks of Melody Barnes, White House Domestic Policy Advisor
• Keynote Speech, Arne Duncan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
• HCZ "From Cradle Through College" report 
• HCZ, PolicyLink & Center for the Study of Social Policy (2009). Focusing on Results in Promise Neighborhoods. 
• Child Trends (2009). Results and Indicators for Children.