Many organizations have attempted to tackle the fallout of urban poverty: failing schools, violent crime, broken homes, sub-standard living space, poor health care and the resulting chronic health problems. But few have been as successful as the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ). In 1997, HCZ initiated a pilot project through a 24-block area in Harlem - the Harlem Children's Zone project -that was designed to address those issues. By 2007, the project had swelled to cover 100 city blocks, serving over 10,000 children and adults, and offering a series of innovative programs - child care, counseling, early childhood education, free medical services, job counseling, technology training, after-school programs, and more - aimed at helping an entire community break free of the cycle of poverty. Talk about a success story. See what President Barack Obama says about HCZ and its efforts to transform the lives of so many.Why Soapbxx
With an older website that was difficult to navigate and didn't work in all browsers, HCZ wasn't keeping up technologically with its own real-world progress. That's when Soapbxx was brought in to jumpstart HCZ's online presence with a fresh website redesign. And it worked. In the first six weeks after the revamped website launched, the number of online donations jumped to 160, versus the previous number of eight to 16 per month; and the HCZ also recorded a boost of 1,200 new email subscribers in its database during that time period. In addition, the redesign also involved:
- creating a more engaging site to attract donations and subscriptions;
- Convio integration;
- moving the sign-up to the home page, which tripled subscriber rates;
