Racial & Economic Justice

On tonight’s consent agenda at the Orange County Board of Education is a resolution in support of immigrant children in our community. The resolution is similar to those already adopted by the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, Orange County Board of Commissioners, and Chapel Hill Town Council.

Orange County elected officials and health department staff have recongized the immediate need to address poverty in our county. As a result, the Orange County Family Success Alliance has been launched, modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone. The Orange County Health Department used health and school system data to select six zones with the highest need. More information can be found here. Each zone held community meetings to glean information for their applications. They then made short presentations and fielded questions. The Family Success Alliance Advisory Council developed a rubric for scoring of the applications. Below is a collection of tweets that summarize the presentations and selection process carried out on Tuesday, December 16th.

Recently, the Orange County Health Department launched plans for the Family Success Alliance, modeled after the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone. 

With its inception as the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in 1970, the Harlem Children’s Zone aims to disrupt generational poverty with a holistic, long-term approach providing education and support from early childhood through college, supportive services to families to prevent homelessness, and health services including obesity prevention.  Serving over 13,000 children and 13,000 adults in 97 blocks of Central Harlem, the engaged children (70% in the served blocks) have a 92% college acceptance rate, 100% of pre-K participants are assessed as school ready, and the 800 local employees fuel economic growth.  The Harlem Children’s Zone also serves as the Model for President Obama’s Promise Neighborhood Initiative that has awarded 58 grants to communities across the country to implement similar programs.