The Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy, a nonprofit organization aimed at improving the lives of Harlem youth, is being used as a template for President Obama’s Promise Neighborhoods program.

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Geoffrey Canada’s nonprofit has created a web of programs that begin before birth, end with college graduation and reach almost every child growing up in 97 blocks carved out of the struggling central Harlem neighborhood.

Canada was raised poor in the South Bronx and went on to earn a graduate education degree from Harvard. Years ago, he grew frustrated that his successful after-school program was not decreasing Harlem’s tally of high school dropouts, juvenile arrests and unemployed youths. He set out to devise an encompassing program to “move the needle” and improve the lives of poor children in a mass, standardized, reproducible way.

Now the Obama administration seeks to replicate Canada’s model in 20 cities in a program called Promise Neighborhoods and has set aside $10 million in the 2010 budget for planning. President Obama has frequently singled out the Harlem Children’s Zone, and first lady Michelle Obama recently called Canada “one of my heroes.”

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