Edition: U.S. / Global  The Harlem Project  By Paul Tough
Published: June 20, 2004  Back in 1990, Geoffrey Canada was just
your average do-gooder. That year, he became the president of a
nonprofit charitable organization based in Harlem called the
Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families, and he set out
trying to improve the world, one poor child at a time. It was a
bad moment to be poor in New York City. Harlem, especially, was
suffering under the simultaneous plagues of crack cocaine, cheap
guns and rampant homelessness, and Canada's main goal at
Rheedlen, in those years, was to keep the children in his
programs alive. The organization had an annual budget of $3
million, which it spent on a predictable array of services in
Upper Manhattan: after-school programs, truancy prevention,
anti-violence training for teenagers. The programs seemed to do
a lot of good for the children who were enrolled in them, at
least in part because of Canada's own level of devotion. He was
obsessed with his job, personally inve