Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [62]
One of the most promising examples of multifaceted social entrepreneurship I’ve witnessed in America is the Harlem Children’s Zone, which helps parents, teachers, residents, and other interested parties create a safe learning environment for young people in a sixty-block area of central Harlem, where more than half of the children live below the poverty line and two-thirds of them score below grade level on state reading and math tests. The Zone offers continuous, comprehensive support for children’s development, from the time their mothers are pregnant until they go to college or to work. There are workshops for expectant parents and parents of children three and under, a preschool program open to four-year-olds, after-school and summer school programs for students in the five elementary schools in the Harlem Children’s Zone, and a chess program. In 2004, the team from Public School 242 tied for fourth place in the national championships. A job center offers young people, ages fourteen to eighteen, year-round training, internships, summer jobs, academic support, and job placement. The Zone’s TRUCE program helps high school seniors graduate on time and get into college. They do so at a higher rate than the New York City average. Computer classes and employment help are available to both young people and adults.
The Zone also runs community development programs: a fitness and nutrition center, neighborhood beautification, intergenerational learning, and housing improvement efforts; an asthma initiative (almost one-third of the children in the Zone have asthma, five times the national average); and a young investors program to encourage low-income working families to begin saving for their children’s college education while the kids are still in preschool. All told, in 2006, the Zone’s fifteen centers served more than 14,400 people, including 9,500 children. Harlem Children’s Zone also supports the conversion of public schools in the Zone into charter schools that pay teachers more to keep the schools open longer hours and operate year-round learning programs.
The driving force behind Harlem Children’s Zone is its charismatic, visionary president, Geoff Canada. He’s taken on a lot of tough challenges at once, convinced that only a comprehensive approach to community building will give all the Zone’s children the future they deserve. As the New York Times Magazine reported in its June 2004 article on him, Canada asked, “Instead of helping some kids beat the odds, why don’t we just change the odds?” Canada’s approach is both liberal and conservative. He wants to properly fund programs that work and improve parenting and the community culture. He pursues both objectives with the same discipline that earned him a third-degree black belt in the martial art of tae kwon do. What is unique about Canada’s approach is not the novelty of his individual programs but their comprehensive sweep. He wants to create a system within which poor children can learn and perform as well as middle-class kids. In a few years we’ll know whether Canada’s sweeping approach works; whether through programs and services that cost about $1,400 per child, poor children can score at or above grade levels on standardized tests, graduate from school on time, and go on to productive lives in college or in the workforce.
Luckily, there are people willing to provide long-term funding for the Harlem Children’s Zone, especially board chairman Stan Druckenmiller, who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager and has devoted himself to the Harlem Children’s Zone with the same zeal and intelligence that made him a success in the stock market. Druckenmiller and the other board members contribute about a third of the annual operating budget. The rest comes from foundations, other private donors, and public funds.
There are worthy, if less comprehensive, ideas in every community