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Promise Neighborhoods

May 27, 2010

 

Several Minnesota communities – including ones closely aligned with MMEP - are formally pursuing grants to produce powerful community-based dynamics to drive superior student outcomes. These include communities from tribal reservations, the Twin Cities’ urban core and suburban inner ring, and Greater Minnesota districts. 

 

The U.S. Department of Education’s “Promise Neighborhoods” program seeks to promote a "place-based" approach to, such as represented by the Harlem Children’s Zone, that focuses resources in support of strong academic outcomes for low income students. Promise Neighborhoods are ones that produce well-coordinated actions to break down “silos” of important services aimed at developing our youth. The grant will provide funding to local entities, including nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education to significantly improve the educational and developmental outcomes of all children in our most distressed communities.

 

Promise Neighborhoods are those that:

 

  • Increase neighborhood based capacity to build a college-going culture

 

  • Build a continuum of academic programs and family and community supports, from the cradle through college to career, with a strong school or schools at the center

 

  • Integrate programs and break down agency "silos" so that solutions are implemented effectively and efficiently across agencies

 

  • Work with local governments, to build the infrastructure of policies, practices, systems, and resources needed to sustain and "scale up" solutions across the broader region beyond the initial neighborhood

 

 

MMEP will be following the progress of the Promise Neighborhood grants, and will continue to keep you updated.

 

  

Carlos Mariani, executive director

 

 

 

The fourteen communities applying are:

 

Blackduck Public Schools, Blackduck

Jewish Family and Children's Service of Minneapolis, Brooklyn Community School District, City of Brooklyn Center

Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Leech Lake Reservation

Little Earth of the United Tribes, Little Earth in South Minneapolis

PEACE Foundation, Minneapolis

Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, Minneapolis

Robbinsdale Area Schools ISD #281, Northwest Hennepin County

Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Onamia

Red Lake Nation Boys & Girls Club, Red Lake Indian Reservation; Red Lake, and Ponemah

Boys & Girls Club of Rochester, Rochester

Child Care Resource & Referral (Head Start), Rochester

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, St. Paul

Boys & Girls Clubs of the Twin Cities, St. Paul - Learning Campus 3

White Earth Reservation Tribal Council, White Earth Reservation which includes all of Mahnomen County and portions of Becker and Clearwater in northwest Minnesota