A New Year, Why Not a New Beginning?

One of the more noteworthy national speakers in the arena of child welfare spent the day in Cleveland in December, and he wowed audiences wherever he went. I heard Geoffrey Canada at the Fatima Family Center where he was the first speaker in The City Club’s planned series of hosting events in neighborhoods.

Canada is the executive director of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), which, according to its website, is “a pioneering, non-profit, community-based organization founded in 1970 that works to enhance the quality of life for children and families in some of New York City's most devastated neighborhoods. HCZ’s 15 centers serve more than 13,000 children and adults, including over 10,000 at-risk children. The emphasis of The Children's Zone work is not just on education, social service and recreation, but on rebuilding the very fabric of community life.” The organizational structure and mission certainly sounds like something we could use here in Cleveland.

As Canada explained what HCZ does and how they do it, nods of approval and understanding were evident throughout the huge crowd that packed Fatima’s gym. He explained that it took them a number of years to figure it out, but the best (and perhaps only) way to solve the problems of underclass children is to start at the beginning. While I was thinking “duhhh,” some people had a look on their faces that said, “wow, what a concept!”

The members of the inaugural class of HCZ’s “Baby College” (which was started in the mid-80s) are themselves now set to graduate from college, and Canada said that from now on hundreds more will be graduating each year; graduates that are eager to give something back to the people and organization that helped them get off on the right foot in life.

The concept is pure in its simplicity: Children need to be raised in a proper and nurturing environment from day one — not from age two, three or whenever they enter kindergarten. Baby College is just what the name implies. New mothers are taught how to raise kids. “We get all up in their business right from the beginning, 24-7, and we stay all up in their business ... forever,” said the plain speaking Canada.

Head Start was wonderfully conceived over 40-years ago, and does do some good, but the fact is, virtually all inner-city gangbangers and prison inmates were enrolled in the program at one point or another in their young lives. What Canada discovered was that a child being in a stable environment six, seven or even eight hours a day simply isn’t enough; it has to be stable 24-7 ... something many young, disadvantaged mothers and fathers just don’t know how to provide. Indeed, Canada is raising the parent(s) right along with their child or children, and he knows it.

Back to the HCZ website: “It is difficult, often impossible, to raise healthy children in a disintegrated community. Without local institutions that draw families and young people together around common interests and activities — religious, social, and recreational organizations, effective schools, safe and well-used public spaces — even the most heroic child-rearing is likely to fail.” And failure is something we certainly know about here in Cleveland.

It’s not that we don’t have some well-meaning programs underway in town — programs that are attempting to stop kids from falling further through the cracks. We only have to look to the renewed leadership of the Cleveland Public Schools. The problem is, most of these efforts are remedial; they seek to repair the damage that has already been done to the child. HCZ’s answer is to never allow the damage to be done in the first place.

So, why was Geoffrey Canada brought to Cleveland to speak — to mock our failures to our faces? And in comparison to HCZ’s successes we certainly are failures. Was he brought to Cleveland to point out the fact that by-and-large we choose to ignore disadvantaged children until they get big enough and old enough — somewhere around the ages of 14, 15 or 16 — to demand our attention with a knife or gun?

Canada was dropping pure pearls of wisdom, but are we smart (or concerned) enough to pick them up? Would the HCZ program work here? Of course it would ... it’ll work anywhere — in any city in the United States — where there is the philanthropic, social and (most importantly) political will to make it work. Then why don’t we embark on a similar program? Why don’t we dispatch social service and child welfare professionals to Harlem to study the HCZ with the idea of replicating here?

The answer is simple: We don’t really care all that much about underprivileged kids. We really don’t. Listen to most of our conversations surrounding the issues of teen murders and declining neighborhoods. It’s rarely about how do we help these kids, it’s more about how do we protect ourselves from them and their murderous ways. We don’t really care if we prevent them from coming juvenile delinquents in the first place, our main concern is how do we body slam them after they begin acting out?

You think I’m exaggerating? Well, we’ll see how long it takes for our community to send people to Harlem to learn how they are doing it right at the HCZ. But just don’t hold your breath while waiting ... you could wind up as dead as a 15-year-old middle school dropout strutting through the King-Kennedy projects with a .9 mm tucked into his waistband.

The City Club did a great community service by bringing Canada into the Hough neighborhood and now if the folks down at the E. 9th & Euclid Avenue headquarters will just get rid of that all-White mural that looks down on luncheon guests. As audiences become increasingly integrated, the out-dated images become increasingly offensive to the minorities they are seeking to attract as members.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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