UWGNOA Enews July 2008

America’s Promise Alliances Launches First “Promise Zone” in New Orleans

Earlier this summer, America’s Promise Alliance announced that New Orleans has been named the first official “Promise Zone” which will bring much needed support services to the city’s youth. Alliance Chair, Alma Powell, along with David Barksdale of the Barksdale Foundation, unveiled the news at an Alliance event held at New Orleans’ Louisiana Children’s Museum on June 18th.

This is the first Promise Zone that the Alliance will be establishing nationwide as part of their 15 in 5 Campaign. The campaign’s goal is to provide 15 million disadvantaged young people access to essential resources needed graduate high school and succeed in college, work and life over the next five years in communities across the country.

America’s Promise Alliance will provide financial, staff and technical support to the Promise Zones, to develop new programming and to expand existing programs that will bring more of the Five Promises to at least 15,000 of that Promise Zone’s most at-risk young people over a five-year period. The Five Promises are the essential resources that research has shown all young people need in their lives to succeed: caring adults; safe places; a healthy start; an effective education; and opportunities to help others.

The work in the Promise Zones will be structured around the 15 in 5 Campaign’s three National Action Strategies, which are:
All Kids Covered: Enroll eligible children in a health insurance program.

Ready for the Real World: Engage middle-schoolers in service learning and career exploration to deepen their motivation for achievement in their world and ensure they graduate high school.

Where the Kids Are: Beginning with schools as hubs, work together to deliver more of the Five Promises where kids already congregate. Reaching youth where they meet makes it more likely that they will receive the support they need from people who already know them by name.

“These Promise Zones will be places of action, hope and progress across the country. Most of all, they will be places of promise for our young people to have the opportunity to succeed,” said Marguerite W. Kondracke, president and CEO, America’s Promise Alliance. “In the face of total destruction, the children and youth of this great city have remained resilient and hopeful. There is truly no more deserving a city than New Orleans to be named the first Promise Zone.”
All Promise Zones will anchor their work around a low-performing school, working with up to15 or more school and community sites to reach as many young people in need as possible. These sites will include elementary, middle and high schools, as well as community, faith and youth centers.

The New Orleans Promise Zone is being funded in part by a $5 million grant from the James and Donna Barksdale Foundation. The Barksdale Foundation awarded the grant to the Alliance to support several communities in the Gulf Coast region and in Houston where work is underway to help children and families impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The New Orleans Promise Zone work will be led by the New Orleans Kids Partnership, a collaboration of eight non-profit organizations headed by United Way for the Greater New Orleans Area.

The Partnership has been working to bring community and school-based services to children and families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School will serve as the primary school site; having nine organizations already established with programs to support the Promise Zone work. The number of school and community sites involved will increase over the five-year period from seven school sites in 2008 to 20 school sites and five community sites in 2012. The six other schools participating in 2008 (in addition to MLK Charter School) are: KIPP Central City Academy and Elementary, S.L. Green Charter School, Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School, New Orleans Charter Middle School, New Orleans College Prep, and Langston Hughes Elementary.
The New Orleans Promise Zone work will include:

Take home meals and nutritional assistance for chronically hungry youth through Second Harvest of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana’s Lagniappe Backpack Program—which provides qualifying children with backpacks of healthy food and nutrition supplements once a week at school;
Public health care access and enrollment programs for the Louisiana Children’s Health Insurance Program through the Louisiana Public Health Institute’s School Health Connection;
Mental health counseling for targeted children through the Children’s Bureau Inc.;
Play programs that incorporate academic, social and emotional development and baby-sitting courses for middle-school aged youth through the Louisiana Children’s Museum;
Volunteer and career exploration opportunities for middle-school youth through Hands On New Orleans;
In classroom and after-school mentoring and tutoring programs through City Year Louisiana and Communities In Schools;
Classes to help parents navigate the school choice process and civic engagement opportunities for children and families to become further involved in the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans through the Urban League of New Orleans and

Activities to help at-risk middle school students understand the importance of graduating high school and attending college through the Urban League’s College Track program.