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Whatever It Takes Book Review

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Submitted By ke562522
Words 1409
Pages 6
Katie Edmonds
Professor Kefalas
Social Problems
April 30,2015
Paul Tough’s, Whatever It Takes wants to answer certain questions that are at the heart of the debate about poverty in the United States. Why are people poor? Why do these people stay poor? And what efforts need to be taken to get these people out of poverty? This book is an inspirational account of one man’s journey to try to boost the educational achievement in New York City’s Harlem. Geoff Canada is the man behind this journey. Canada grew up extremely poor in the South Bronx, but he defied all odds and made his way out. Throughout his life he has tried to help a scattered amount of poor through a series of non-profits. But all these efforts seemed very short lived and his reach was very limited. But his new idea is on a different scale. He launched a multimillion-dollar initiative program called the Harlem Children’s Zone. This zone refers to the 97-block area of Harlem and serves more than 10,00 children and 13,000 adults.
Neighborhoods like Harlem exist all over the country. Detroit, New Orleans, Houston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia are just to name a few. In all of these cities there are neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated, where crime rates are higher, test scores are lower, and good jobs are pretty much nonexistent. These kids seem destined to have a dim future because of their situation when they are young. What Geoff Canada is trying to prove in Harlem is that there is a way out for those kids and their families in these poverty stricken neighborhoods.
His main goal is to reach all children and their families where they live, in all aspects of their lives, in order to boost student achievement. Ultimately, by providing support services to children in Harlem, this will give them the educational and social capital to succeed in school, and then in college, and life after college,

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