Or at least the promoters of Harlem Children's Zone-style anti-poverty programs would hope. As a tentative fan of the HCZ approach, I was heartened to see the Feds launch the Promise Neighborhood Initiatives granting process in 2010. A remarkable number of organizations applied for planning grants. But what is more remarkable is the number of much smaller programs trying to replicate parts of the HCZ.
To take greater Boston as an example, there are three actual PNIs that got grant funding: the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Community Day Care Center of Lawrence, and the United Way of Central Massachusetts. Beyond that, Cambridge launched Baby U, and I hear that a housing project in Somerville has something similar in the works.
Needless to say, this raises at least two immediate questions:
1) Does the HCZ approach work? If not, then the rapid rate of replication seems misguided.
2) Let's say it does work. Then, where does it work? Under what settings? Should it reproduce rampantly, or is it simply one among many anti-poverty approaches?
Not sure anyone's asking those questions.
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