On September 22, I’ll be giving a lunchtime speech in Portland, Oregon, at an event organized by the Oregon Community Foundation. Details, including how to order tickets, are here. In a blog post on the foundation’s website, Mary Louise McClintock, the foundation’s early-childhood program director, gives some background:
Geoffrey Canada has developed a system of pre-birth-to-college support in Harlem. Author Paul Tough spent five years observing Canada’s process and meeting with the administrators, teachers and students who make up the Harlem Children’s Zone’s “Promise Neighborhood.” The story of how this has played out is astonishing and Tough’s book is a page-turner. Impressed with Geoff Canada’s approach and results so far, the Obama Administration has proposed funding for Promise Neighborhood replication sites around the country.
In my years in the early childhood field, I have seen increased recognition — around the state and in the nation — of the critical role that early childhood development plays in the health and well-being of the child, the adult they become and society as a whole. The Harlem Children’s Zone appears to be one more example of how investments in our youngest children and their families can pay off in later school success.
