Kalamazoo Promise Still in Need of Comprehensive Vision

The Kalamazoo Promise was a popular topic over the weekend, featured in two Gazette articles. One basically spoke about how it is still holding on in tough times, the other about a new book published about the Promise, which speaks about the difficulties and challenges faced by the Promise.

Many are coming to realize that even though the project has created something truly ground-breaking and inspirational, we still have a long way to go until the true dream of its ideals are actualized.

There is no comprehensive plan to make the Promise a collective community program; it still only exists as an argument for an economic vehicle for college tuition. Until people realize that it will take much more community action to make this program successful, it will continue to raise doubts and suspicions.

The Kalamazoo Promise will not create direct change on its own; it needs to support the children and families in order for them to succeed. As I wrote in a previous post, the Developmental Assets model would be an excellent place to start:

Developmental Assets are common sense, positive experiences and qualities that help influence choices young people make and help them become caring, responsible adults. Studies of more than 2.2 million young people in the United States consistently show that the more assets young people have, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors and the more likely they are to thrive. Assets have power for all young people, regardless of their gender, economic status, family, or race/ethnicity. Furthermore, levels of assets are better predictors of high-risk involvement and thriving than poverty or being from a single-parent family.

We have the opportunity to create a comprehensive vision by plugging in a model that already WORKS and using it to our advantage here in Kalamazoo.

Developmental Assets: A Potential Template for Community Covenants

At the VISTA training last month in Ypsilanti, I was privileged to see a presentation on the Developmental Asset Model for children conducted by the Search Institute. I was so inspired by the research that when I returned to Kalamazoo I told our director Jeff Brown about what I had learned. It turned out that Jeff was already certified in Developmental Assets and wanted to implement that idea into our community covenant to support the Kalamazoo Promise.

From the Search Institute website:

Developmental Assets are common sense, positive experiences and qualities that help influence choices young people make and help them become caring, responsible adults. Studies of more than 2.2 million young people in the United States consistently show that the more assets young people have, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors and the more likely they are to thrive. Assets have power for all young people, regardless of their gender, economic status, family, or race/ethnicity. Furthermore, levels of assets are better predictors of high-risk involvement and thriving than poverty or being from a single-parent family.

There are forty identified Developmental Assets, which are broken down into external and internal assets. External assets include the categories of support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time. Categories of Internal assets include commitment to learning, positive values, school competencies, and positive identity. The individual assets vary upon the age group of the children, but all include these basic categories. You can view each of them on their website:

Early Childhood (ages 3-5)
Middle Childhood (ages 8-12)
Adolescents (ages 12-18)

One of the great pieces of this model is that it stresses programs that center on relationship building and valuing youth, rather than simply implementing new programs. It has the potential to be a great resource when the community is ready to create a covenant to encompass the new vision of Kalamazoo. If we build our model this innovative research, it could have the potential to affect a great number of children and families in Kalamazoo

Could Kalamazoo be home to an Educare center?

What's a best way to make sure our youth grow up with the highest chance of success? Support them when the are young and most vulnerable. That's what successful Educare centers across the United States are doing to give their at-risk children the best chance of succeeding. Their goal: to dramatically improve the quality in programming for early children and create a platform for broader policy change.

Educare centers are state-of-the-art early childhood centers designed to meet the needs of today's families who are making the transition from welfare to work and are recipients of a mix of Head Start, child care and preschool services. They serve 150-200 of their community's at-risk children (birth to 5 years) and their families. Each classroom provides a BA-degreed teacher, an assistant teacher with a AA degree, and an aid from the community. All classrooms are supervised by teachers with Master's degrees in early childhood.

So why haven't we implemented one of these innovative ideas already? Basically, its purely a financial motive: Educare centers cost around $4-5 million to build and nearly $2-3 million each year to maintain. We simply haven't allocated the resources for such a project, though of large foundations are willing to help, it wouldn't be difficult to attract the funds. Organizations such as the Gates Foundation have contributed to projects on equal scale in the past and could be a possible avenue for the future.

Kalamazoo has the unique opportunity of already having an amazing program, the Kalamazoo Promise, in place to garner support for of these centers. What better argument that to suggest that our program is not the only solution but a perfect place to start for MORE programming to ensure our children have the best possible future. We are already a model for how to make education a real possibility for every child; lets make sure that they are supported from their earliest times of learning.

Analyzing Southwest Michigan's Potential to be a Research Model

Several months ago after several meetings with leaders and collaborators of the nine counties of Southwest Michigan, the collation of organizations accepted a plan to bring about a community indicators database in Southwest Michigan. The database would essentially take data from the service providers in the region to create a comprehensive analysis of what works and where there are necessary gaps that need to be filled in the fight to reduce poverty.

Soon afterwords, the combined efforts of the Lewis Walker Institute and the Kalamazoo County Poverty Reduction Initiative secured a significantly-sized grant to fund their efforts. When PRI and Lewis Walker representatives recently met with state poverty officials to discuss the state's direction in poverty reduction, they found many similarities in their plans. In turn if the model for Southwest Michigan could be successfully adapted, it is quite possible that the region could plan a lead role in poverty research on both a state and federal level.

There are several other factors why the region would be an ideal model for poverty reduction:

• The diversity in the socioeconomic status of its citizens
• The mix of both urban (Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Benton Harbor) and rural populations of residents
• Its basically neutral position in state political affluence
• The success of already standard programs such as the Kalamazoo Promise
• The resources and leadership already available through the Lewis Walker Institute and PRI
• The cooperation between counties that the region has already demonstrated.

With all these factors considered, the future for a collaborative framework of poverty reduction in the region seems very positive. If we can work together and effectively create an effective system of community indicators, we might not only improve our local communities but have an affect on distant states as well.

Lets Focus on the Children

Getting the leaders of over 50 organizations to focus on one specific area of poverty reduction was never going to be an easy task. So when a nine county collaboration on regional poverty was chosen to solve the regions problems, they knew their task was far from easy. It was going to take a cooperative force much larger than any known in recent history to direct this ambitious process.

For many of the organizations leaders, it seemed like another meeting of much "talk" and little action. For those facing dire situations back in their own regions, any time lost would be to the detriment of their communities. A feeling of hopelessness rose from some commentators, which became evident by the frustration in their voices as they spoke.

When the frustration seemed poised to boil over and threaten the collaboration, a new focus brought people together under one banner: children.

For Kalamazoo residents and other counties as well, the idea of focusing on low-income children is not a new idea. The Kalamazoo Promise has often been cited as a model program for other communities.

However, it is quite obvious that all is not well for the youth in Kalamazoo. When a bicycler is attacked by ten loitering teens, it is quite evident there is still much left undone in the community. Reports like the Kid's Count Data Book show that Kalamazoo is still far behind many communities in the several indicators such as education and health.

One interesting program model that was brought up that inspired several in the group was the Harlem Children's Zone. The HCZ is a holistic system of education, social-service and community-building programs aimed at helping the children and families in a 97-block area of Central Harlem.

Some of their successes include:

• 100% of students in the Harlem Gems pre-K program were found to be school-ready for the sixth year in a row.
• 81% of Baby College parents improved the frequency of reading to their children
• $4.8 million returned to 2,935 Harlem residents as a result of HCZ's free tax-preparation service
• 10, 833 number of youth served by HCZ in 2008

For the developers of the HCZ, it would appear this concept was developed from scratch, with little existing programs before hand. However, in Kalamazoo, we already have the foundations several of their parts to develop a similar zone in the area.

What programs do we have, and what areas need improvement? We do have programs that are successful in Kalamazoo County that don't need to be scrapped, but how we determine which programs need to be highlighted must be put in question. Research needs to be accomplished to determine how we would implement the conditions of this very successful program in Southwest Michigan communities.

If we can find the success and gaps in programs to making a similar "zone" for Kalamazoo, the next step could simply be marketing the story in order to increase awareness and access higher sources of funding available for larger programs. Obviously, the next step would be to reach out to other county regions and increase the collaborative effort. The larger and more organized we can be, the better access to resources.

The Harlem Children's Zone is an intriguing program that we should learn from, but we should strive to develop elements that mold specifically to our own local communities.