Our most valuable resource

Geoffrey Canada is an antidote to hopelessness.

On Friday, he gave a dose of his medicine to a large audience in Seattle.

Canada created the Harlem Children's Zone, which Oprah praised for proving that poor, black children can learn.

Canada and his supporters drew a line around a 97-block area of Harlem and said every child in that zone, about 10,000 children, would get a solid education and constant support from birth to college, no matter what it took.

He spoke at the annual luncheon of Solid Ground, a nonprofit that provides a range of social services to more than 38,000 people a year in Seattle, from housing to meals to skills training for adults and children.

Canada said children are our most valuable national resource, yet we squander the potential of so many of them. Sometimes we don't even think they have potential.

He read an article a few years ago about an attempt to save money during a budget crisis in Rhode Island. It cost $39,000 to keep an adult in prison for a year and $95,000 to keep a child locked up for a year. So the state lowered the age at which a child could be sent to adult prison.

"Nowhere did anyone say, maybe if it is costing us $95,000 a year to lock up children we should find a way not to lock up children."

Rhode Island changed the law back. Too many kids in adult prisons had to be in protective custody, which cost $110,000 a year.

"What nation thinks so little of its children," he asked, "that this would be a solution?"

Children are so important to the nation's future that he used to assume leaders were working on a plan to assure children would be prepared for the roles we need them to play. But there is no plan. "No one is coming," Canada said. No one is going to save Seattle's children unless you do."

HCZ did that with its community, getting children to perform as well as the kids at any New York school, and sometimes better. As soon as a child is born in the neighborhood, and sometimes before, HCZ is knocking on the door, trying to get involved with the family.

About a third of HCZ funding comes from individuals and corporations, a third from foundations and the rest from government and investments.

Canada isn't the only educator to succeed with poor black or Hispanic children, but he is doing it on a large scale in multiple schools.

He knows they can overcome because he did. When he was 4, his father left him, his three brothers and their mother in a rat-infested apartment in the South Bronx.

Canada got involved in gangs, but he also had a love of books and a vision of success. As an educator he recognized the need for a holistic approach.

Each child gets whatever he needs to thrive — food, tutoring, mental-health counseling for a parent.

And the kids perform.

But Canada's not some magical character. He didn't create the zone by himself. There are people in every community who are making a positive difference in children's lives.

The room Friday was full of them.

Solid Ground was started by people who wanted to make their neighborhood a better place to live. It has grown and spread its work into multiple areas.

Canada praised their work and said what he has done in Harlem, breaking down barriers between social services and education and making kids the top priority for everyone, can be replicated here.

"Most people in our business don't dream of solving the problem," he said. They say, oh, we have to be realistic, there aren't enough resources.

While he started with nothing but a plan, he thinks it should now be easier to get support, because of the Harlem successes.

This is what Canada told a group of Harlem parents early on, "There will be no excuses. We're not going to say, 'The child failed because they came from a home with only one parent.' We're not going to say, 'The child failed because they're new immigrants into the country.' If your child gets into our school, that child is going to succeed."

His mix of optimism, intelligent action, and an uncompromising focus on the best interests of children is good medicine.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.