The only way to attack poverty: let’s go whole hog
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Lately, I’ve had a bit of the social-problems blues. I am overwhelmed by the expanse of troubles facing our urban communities and the lack of proven solutions to combat them.
Take this one idea.
Awhile ago, I had a blog commenter who was obsessed with young mothers having children. He said if we could just fix this, all our problems would go away.
And then this week I watched a video by researchers Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, who did intense study into the subject of why young poor women have babies too early.
The reasons? Well, they’re complicated, but one big reason was that these women lack stability in their lives and just want someone to love, someone that will love them. They didn’t get that growing up.
How do we fix that? We fix our education system so these girls aren’t forgotten. We fix low-wages so their own moms don’t have to spend 12 hours a day working and can spend time with their kids. We fix a criminal justice system that locks too many young men up, creating absent fathers, uncles and cousins.
In short, we fix everything to fix the one problem that was supposed to fix it all.
See why I’m depressed?
Except there’s one anti-poverty initiative in America that’s actually working to fix everything at once, and it may be coming to Chicago.
Harlem Children’s Zone. Heard of it?
The brainchild of Geoffrey Canada, who grew up poor and black in New York City’s South Bronx, Harlem Children’s Zone is an all out battle to conquer poverty in a section of Harlem. Take a look:
Kids in the HCZ “pipeline” have closed the race/poverty achievement gap that has daunted educators for decades.
It’s been so successful that President Obama wants to bring it to other communities around the country, one of which could be Chicago’s Garfield Park.
Arloa Sutter (center) with Garfield Park residents from Breakthrough Urban Ministries
I sat down and talked to Arloa Sutter, director of Breakthrough Urban Ministries, which works in the neighborhood. She went to hear Canada speak and teach his method a few months back. What she learned?
HCZ is about results. They do what works. And if it doesn’t work, they don’t bother, no matter how nice it seems.
Case in point: childhood obesity. In order to stop rising obesity rates, particularly among poor children, HCZ hired a top obesity and nutrition expert. A year after they were hired, Canada sat down with the expert to talk about results. How was it going?
Oh great, the expert said. People were signed up and motivated and excited.
But were they losing weight? No.
So that expert was fired. Instead, they divided the kids into teams and told them whoever loses the most weight gets to go to DisneyWorld. The pounds dropped.
Do what works. Canada is not afraid to shape every aspect of these kids lives if it means interrupting the intergenerational cycle of poverty.
Arloa Sutter wants to create her own pipeline in Garfield Park. Right now, that pipeline is cradle to prison to death. She wants it to be cradle to college education to fulfilling life.
“You can transform a community if you reach a tipping point where everyone in the community starts to feel the change,” says Sutter.
I’m becoming convinced – if we want to topple poverty, we have to go whole hog.
Our measly few hours a week, our intermittent social programming, it isn’t enough to combat the slew of negativity that kids in poor neighborhoods are facing. Those things are nice, but they’re not enough. While we wait in vain hope that one of the kids going through those programs might escape poverty, hundreds of others are sinking further in.
But a plan on the scale of HCZ takes two things: 1) money, and 2) commitment.
They’ve got the second one in spades. And money?
Breakthrough has a yearly budget of $3.5 million, compared with HCZ’s $70 million. That’s a big gap, but one Sutter is determined to fill.
“Until there’s housing and parks and good schools, we’re going to keep trying. We’re not going to stop until we figure it out,” she says.
Arloa says that out of 77 Chicago neighborhoods, if we could create real change in just six of them, we’d see our city transform.
I find myself trying to figure out the root cause of poverty. Is it economics? Is it racism? Is it class culture? I want to know which comes first: the chicken or the egg. But instead, I think it’s time to scrap it and build a new barn.
Recreating more Harlem Children Zone’s is a daunting task. But more daunting is a future with more of the same: more violence, more kids going to jail instead of college, more babies born to families that can’t support them, more neighborhoods riddled with drugs, gangs and crime.
This may be our chance to change things.
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Fantastic- I really dug where in the video he states the kids ask him if he is rich, and he says yes I am, “but what they are really asking is can you help me figure out how to gey a nice car and house” and they get all excited! That moved me, and while everyone may not have Mr. Canada’s talent, we can all do something if we are aware, and love enough to not be judgemental, giving others time and a chance to change. For some, positive small talk (conversation) just on a bus can open a door or turn a light on in the tunnel, this post is about finding solutions, that is what we need. Great work Mr. Canada and I want to complement you too- in dashboard (why do follow…), at Megan Cottrell there is only one word, “human”, the best complement for your writing!!!
Thanks, Joey. That’s a wonderful compliment and exactly what I hope to be. I appreciate it!
In response to another comment. See in context »Money is the root of all evil. Caring and concerned parents are the answer. Until you have parents that care about the welfare of their children these problems will exist. That mean getting up to school even when not called. That means checking homework. That means knowing the where abouts of your children at all times. That means not being your child’s BFF but being its Parent and all the ” I hate you’s” that it entails. We don’t have that anymore. Stop the madness and close the wallets, go back to basics.
If I may, in total agreement about good parenting- but realize I heard a teacher say about parental invoalvement-”No No you don’t want that, not with those parents”- the kids, they got no choice, this is not a money thing, it is a positive involvment thing- know anybody reading 1 hour a week to a kid (call and sign up, think about it) or doing anything? We are here so short a time, I think this is really about thinking higher.
In response to another comment. See in context »Hi Greg –
I respectfully disagree. I think parents can be part of the problem, but I think that when we pick any little part of poverty and try to blame that thing, we end up ignoring the complex dynamics that get people there.
What about single moms who work two or three jobs to make ends meet? What about a mom or dad that didn’t even graduate from 8th grade, for whom checking homework isn’t a reality? Or for the many parents who are more concerned that their kid can’t walk to school safely or that they might be evicted tomorrow to have time to be that involved?
I’m not saying that these aren’t problems. They are. But the roots of poverty are deep and complex. That’s why I think we need and all encompassing solution.
In response to another comment. See in context »The video clip focuses primarily on the HCZ charter school. But HCZ is a wholistic “cradel-to-college” approach. Those parents who need to get back to basics? Many of them inherited dysfunctional coping mechanisms from living with both poverty and violence. That cycle gets interrupted through parenting classes and support groups as well as medical and mental health services for the whole family. Once the cycle stops, the need for future intervention declines sharply. It does take money for an initial investment in human capital.
There’s a second part to that video that I couldn’t post that focuses more on the rest of the program, not just the school. I think if you look on youtube, it’s listed as “Part 2″.
In response to another comment. See in context »The big problem with this whole idea is the cost. I don’t know the breakdown of the funds for HCZ and their 70 mil budget but I know that the tuition free school costs millions and millions to run. With all of the benefits that are involved, from trips to Disneyland to over $100 each month to each student to 6 students per teacher, to transportation, to that massive building we are probably talking about 10s of millions of dollars. How many students does this school graduate each year for 10s of millions of dollars? If we decided to create similar programs for all children in poverty across the country how much would that cost? The entire nation would go under in the attempt. This idea works for small populations of people but it does not and can not ever noticable effect the poverty statistics for the entire country.
How about some of these practical solutions: All people that receive government aid are required to take a money management class where they learn to manage their money and not waste it. As part of this class and in order to get your check each month you need to create a savings account and deposit some of your money in it every month. Even $25 a month would help teach about saving.
You may think that the whole wasting money comment comes from a middle class person who has money to waste but one of the issues with poverty is that when poor people get money they spend it voraciously with little thought for making it last. Then comes the rent bill.
Another idea would be to require parenting classes for all mothers who receive government help for thier children. One huge problem in this country is that young women get pregnant, have children, then have no earthly idea how to raise them so their young children turn around, get pregnant and the cycle continues. Many of the problems mentioned in this article and on the videos stem from a lack of foundation within the home.
I don’t have any idea what to do with men getting women pregnant in droves and taking no responsibility for their children causing many children to grow up without a father, a situation that again becomes cyclical because without a strong father figure, young men don’t grow up knowing how to be men.
I also don’t have any ideas for the ultra rich that add to this problem by the simple fact that the gap between obsessivly rich and poor is unhealthy and obscene.
Hey Ryan -
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
One thing to note about HCZ is that they are not primarily government funded. I think government funding takes up 20 to 30 percent of their budget. Canada decided that government funding was too unreliable, and solicited help from corporations and individual donors instead. I think that’s a much better solution.
You’re right that programs like this are expensive. That’s for sure. But think of it this way – let’s say 30 to 40 percent of the young men in the zone would end up in jail instead of going to college otherwise. The cost to incarcerate them? At least $30,000 a year, compared to the $5,000 per student that the promise academy spends. Plus, add on the fact that those young men will never pay taxes and the costs to society like drug dealing, violence and broken families they may create. And that’s just the boys.
There are some programs like what you’re talking about with money management. For example, there’s a public housing program called Family Self Sufficiency. A family enrolls for 5 years and makes big goals for themselves – finishing college, getting a promotion, buying a house, etc. Everytime their rent would increase because of their income going up, that money is instead matched by CHA and set aside for them in an escrow account. They save, learn about financial management and complete their goals. It’s a much, much better system than our current welfare system (which I hate), but also hard to run on a big scale.
I think one thing we don’t think of when we talk about the limited geographical impact of HCZ is that if we could clean up just a few neighborhoods, that impact would multiply. These kids are going to move into other neighborhoods and be good citizens. They’re going to contribute to a tax base that funds more programs like this.
Anyway – ridiculously long reply – but thanks for commenting!
In response to another comment. See in context »Much of what you said I like, but I disagree that cleaning up a few neighborhoods would cause the impact to multiply. The reason this won’t work is because, when you make these changes, the populations in these areas would decrease (less single mothers with 4 kids, less younger mothers, less teenage men running around impregnating woman after woman). While the populations of poorer areas would continue to increase, the populations of these areas would decrease which in turn would lessen the impact of the program. The essence of the program itself decreases its impact on other neightborhoods. This is why we need some full scale ideas (not our current welfare system) that can make some small changes across the board. These universal small changes could move into bigger changes whereas big changes in isolated areas are difficult to spread.
In response to another comment. See in context »God damn it I love this.
Solutions from the ground…fuck the academic bullshit…we have to come to grips with what motivates a culture to achieve…we are steeped in federal one fits all culture of education…does it really matter if Disneyland motivates someone to achieve…does the desire to experience an affluent vacation spot say anything about our culture?
Can we define Ghetto…it is a place that has boundaries, that restrict experience, that restrict new perspectives…anything that expands one’s viewpoint is valuable. And only those on the ground, living with the people they love, that they hope can break a vicious cycle know the way out.
A teacher changed my life, one caring guy who showed me some possibilities for an angry student who thought he was stupid.
All it takes is one person who knows the neighborhood, who knows the problems, who finds a common ground.