ABSTRACT
People have the capacity to learn throughout their entire lives; however, poverty can have a profound effect on one’s ability to learn, especially during the first five years of life. There are many factors associated with low socioeconomic status that affect a child’s ability to learn and develop ageappropriate skills, including community engagement and family enrichment. During the Obama Administration, there has been an increased focus on improving the quality of life for both children and adults in poverty. One of the programs originally designed to meet this need is the Promise Neighborhood Initiative (later rebranded as the Promise Zone Initiative). This chapter outlines one community’s progress from an initial, federally funded, Promise Neighborhood, to a grant-funded only Promise Neighborhood supported by the Hudson, New York community. While the goal and beginnings of the Promise Neighborhood Initiative were encouraging, the loss of funding for communities that were early adopters can be devastating. Described here is how one, small, urban community handled this abandoned federal initiative.
