During the Academy Awards, there were two commercials that caught my attention. The commercials interested me because they put a spot light on Geoffrey Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ). Months ago on 60 minutes I had seen a segment covering the social service experiment of the Harlem Children’s Zone that started in 1990 as a one block pilot program and has now grown to 97 blocks. The commercial was an ad for Members Project from American Express and TakePart. Since I had never heard of the Members Project or TakePart, I decided to do a little research. My research makes it clear that Members Project, TakePart, Geoffrey Canada and HCZ are all very intriguing and deserve their own blog post discussion on making change happen. In the interest of keeping your attention, today I decided to just introduce these noteworthy topics and follow up on each one in later posts.
Let’s start with Geoffrey Canada and HCZ. The HCZ web site states that Canada joined HCZ in 1993 and became the President and CEO in 1990. Since the site is written so well I am going to just provide a quote...hopefully I am not breaking any copyright laws…
The New York Times Magazine said the Zone Project “combines educational, social and medical services. It starts at birth and follows children to college. It meshes those services into an interlocking web, and then it drops that web over an entire neighborhood….The objective is to create a safety net woven so tightly that children in the neighborhood just can’t slip through.”
The 60 Minutes segment left you feeling inspired and wondering if this model had any hope of being replicated in other cities. Canada’s passion for this project and the children was contagious. He simply stated that if the children are not learning and producing the expected results then the teachers were fired. Entry to the program is through lottery and students are pushed to work very hard. It makes me wonder if there is a succession plan in place for Canada. He is clearly a unique and driven reformist. It will be very difficult to fill his shoes. Obviously there is so much more to discuss on this topic and the changes needed within the nations educational system…till next time.
Next on our list is TakePart. If you are into philanthropy in the least bit, this is a great site to investigate. TakePart is a content driven social action network. It focuses on controversial issues, activism, environmental, human rights and political news. The site is linked to Participant Media. Participant Media is associated with films and documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Soloist and The Cove. Wikipedia says it perfectly… its films are typically based on current events and topical subjects and presented in such a way to inspire viewers to advocate for social change. That’s where TakePart becomes relevant. The site provides the resources and platform to motivate change. Check it out. Something here will interest you.
Once you are at the TakePart web site, click on the link at the right for Members Project. You can get involved with Members Project in one or all of three ways…voting for 5 charities that will receive funding from American Express, volunteering your time to a cause and earn American Express membership rewards bonus points and/or donating money or membership rewards bonus points to any of the listed charities. The current voting cycle ends on May 24, 2010. The winning charities will receive $200,000 each. There is such a wide range of charities that there is certain to be one that connects with you. If you are involved with a charity, take a look and see how you can get your charity on the ballot for next time.
Originally I set out to find out more information on the Harlem Children’s Zone and as a result I was introduced to a whole new community of social action. Truly there is something on this site that will interest you and maybe even motivate you to take action…environmental energy, health, education, human & civil rights, global affairs, animal welfare, etc. If your action is not currently listed on the site, you are encouraged to introduce it. As I stated earlier, each of the topics in my message today deserve more in depth discussion. I think things could get really interesting. If you have a moment, check out the links in the post and see where change is needed and/or happening. Interesting how the topics highlighted in this blog post are filled with opportunities for transition. Have a wonderful weekend.
Mom In Transition 