Background

The Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink (PNI) combines the leadership of PolicyLink, the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), and the Center for the Study of Social Policy in order to provide resources and guidance to build and sustain burgeoning Promise Neighborhoods.

Inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone, the U.S. Department of Education’s federal Promise Neighborhoods program is a bold initiative to break the cycle of generational poverty by wrapping children in a seamless pipeline of health, social, and educational supports from birth through college and career.

In November, 2009, HCZ, PolicyLink, and The Center for the Study of Social Policy, with contributions by Child Trends, created a framing document, “Focusing on Results in Promise Neighborhoods: Recommendations for the Federal Initiative” as a discussion paper with a singular message: that the central focus of Promise Neighborhoods should be on achieving a core set of results for poor children and families; and that success for individual sites, as well as for the overall initiative, will require that these results drive planning and design, start‐up activities, program implementation, and evaluation. This document helped to spark discussion of the importance of a strong results focus in Promise Neighborhoods and proved to be helpful to the development of the federal initiative.

See the library for additional resources, ranging from materials to assist in getting results to those geared to build organizational capacity.