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Geoffrey Canada ( 1952 - )  Category ( Civil_Rights_Activists ) [suggest a correction]
 

Geoffrey Canada has been fighting poverty all his life -- firsthand, growing up in the festering South Bronx in the 1960s, and later as a social activist.

"I had thin socks, thin pants, no sweaters and no boots," he recalled in a 1995 interview with People Magazine. "It wasn't until years later that I found you could remain warm in the winter if you had the right clothes."

For a time during his adolescence, Canada carried a knife as he moved about his neighborhood. Eventually, he accidentally cut himself to the bone and treated the cut himself so his mother wouldn't confiscate the weapon.

His mother -- a single parent -- finally sent Geoffrey to live with his grandmother on Long Island. There, Canada later said, "she cooled my hot temper and anger over being poor and showed me there was dignity even in poverty." He graduated from Wyandanch High School with honors and used a scholarship from the Fraternal Order of Masons to attend Bowdoin College in Maine, which at the time was 95 percent Caucasian.

To his surprise, he found a close-knit, supportive network of faculty and fellow students and did well academically.

"My succes was less a testament to my brilliance," he wrote in a later essay, "then a tribute to the hard work of professors and students who believed in me, challenged me, molded me and finally sent me out into the world to do what I had to do."

For a time after graduation, Canada worked with emotionally disturbed adolescents in New England. In 1983, returned to New York City to become director of the truancy prevention program at the Rheedlen Center for Children and Families.

He found some rewards at Rheedlen, but also frustration. While there were 500 children in the program, there was 500 more on a waiting list.

This led to the Harlem Children's Zone. Canada changed Reedlen into a group that would serve all the children in a 24-block area of Harlem. The New York Times magazine described it as "one of the biggest social experiments of our time." Since then, the zone has expanded to 97 blocks.

According to a profile of Canada in "Current Biography," the Harlem Children's Zone "employs more than 650 people, who work on about 20 different programs. Initiatives include Harlem Gems, a program for prekindergarten students; the Family Support Center, which provides family counseling; Baby College, a class for new parents; and the after-school program Truce, which is an acronym for The Renaissance University for Community Education. Within the original 24-block zone, 88 percent of the children have participated in at least one of Canadas programs. The HCZ Promise Academy, a charter school, is the newest and most ambitious of Canadas projects. The academy opened its doors to 100 kindergarteners and 100 sixth-graders in the fall of 2004, with plans to add 200 new students each year until grades kindergarten through 12 are filled."

Noting the success of Canada's program, President Barack Obama announced plans in 2009 to replicate the HCZ model in 20 other cities across the country.

Canada has also written several books, including "Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America."


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