If you have followed this blog at all you know that I think very highly of Geoffrey Canada, the CEO and President of Harlem Children’s Zone. He carries an uncanny combination of street smarts and Harvard smarts, and that has led to a lot of innovative and groundbreaking ideas around the allevation of poverty in inner-city America.
He has a new article out that can be read here. The whole thing is worth reading, but I thought it worthwhile to include here some of my favorite quotes:
On the critical role that education plays in breaking the chains of poverty:
Every day of my professional life has confirmed that education is the key to breaking the cycle of generational poverty. The problem has been how to educate these poor children who are trapped in a calcified, failing public-education system, and in devastated neighborhoods where failure has become the accepted norm.
On the importance of working together, and not settling for ‘heroic’ ministries that work in isolation of each other:
In neighborhoods across America, community-based nonprofits are talking to each other and with their local schools to create new partnerships with the goal of boosting the educational prospects of poor children. In some cases, these adults – who all have had the same desire – are working together for the first time. Many have been doing heroic work – whether they are tutoring high school kids or teaching teenaged moms to raise healthy babies. But now they are putting it all together, creating comprehensive systems to address the needs of children from birth through college, and aiming to strengthen the families and communities around these children.
And finally, the philosophical centerpiece of the Harlem Children’s Zone – which incidentally I would make a case matches the teaching of Jesus – and how important that is to fighting poverty:
People always ask me how the Harlem Children’s Zone was able to rally a community that had been devastated for decades and the simple answer is making children’s success the centerpiece. Everyone wants the children in their community to succeed. So we tapped into that universal feeling and focused our efforts around the needs of children – which were numerous in a neighborhood like Harlem.
I am a lifelong Chicagoan, a pastor at River City Community Church, and an author who writes a lot about resisting and confronting white supremacy from a faith lens.
Our church was founded in January of 2003 in the west Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, and is centered on the core values of worship, reconciliation, and neighborhood development. We long to see increased spiritual renewal as well as social and economic justice in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and entire city, demonstrating compassion and alleviating poverty as tangible expressions of the Kingdom of God. It is also through the gift of this faith community that I have learned to see the profound historical and spiritual impact of the stronghold of white supremacy, and where I have been challenged to broaden and deepen my understanding of discipleship in the hopes of becoming a serious enough Christ follower who is able to meaningfully participate with those who have risen up in defiance of this evil principality.
The lessons learned in this journey have been captured in a pair of books on race. The first, White Awake, explores the barriers that white people tend to face – white Christians specifically – when we attempt to awaken to and understand white supremacy through a faith lens. I spend a lot of time here addressing the internal defenses that are bound to go off when this journey is taken seriously, and I chart out a path for developing a resilient spirit that steadfastly moves towards truth, justice, and equity. The second, White Lies, further builds out the path for the white Christian who longs to actively participate in the resistance and confrontation of white supremacy. I spend a lot of time here exploring why it is so hard to tell the truth about race, as well as expose the lies that sustain it, within white, Christian, Bible-believing environments. I then propose nine practices that position us for engaging in this task.
On the personal front, my career started in the marketplace, as I was part of three dot.com startups in the 90’s. My vocational path shifted when I joined the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in 1998, and I spent five years working there. I started River City Community Church in January 2003 and have been happily serving here ever since. On the education front, my undergrad was in Business (Purdue University), my graduate degree in theology (Moody Bible Institute), and my doctoral degree in community development (Northern Seminary). On the family front, my wife is a Professor of Psychology, and we have two amazing children (Xander and Gabriella).
drdanielhill.com 
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