ASU+GSV 2026 Summit | Monday, April 13, 2026, 3:00 pm-3:40 pm | The Prime Time Stage powered by WGU
Speakers
- Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone
- Rosa Flores, CNN
Key Takeaways
- Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, delivers an impassioned conversation about why he came out of retirement -- summoned, he says, by a divine calling to save another million children.
- Canada argues that the COVID generation has been traumatized and abandoned, and that America's approach of burdening schools alone with solving deep poverty is fundamentally broken.
- He describes the Harlem Children's Zone's holistic model: wrapping families in support (dental care, social workers, emergency funds, extended school hours including Saturdays and summers), achieving 100% college acceptance for five consecutive years.
- His central thesis is that every solution already exists somewhere in America, but the country lacks the political will to invest $3,500 per child in prevention when it willingly spends $550,000 per year to incarcerate an adult.
Notable Quotes
"God woke me up in the middle of the night and said, you've got to save another million kids."
ā Geoffrey Canada
"You spend $500,000 for nothing... We are willing to spend $500,000 on that person when he turns 18. And you don't want to spend $3,500 on a person when they're six. And I just don't get the math."
ā Geoffrey Canada
"Education is the only business you don't need patent attorneys, because you can't give away a good idea. No one's trying to steal your ideas."
ā Geoffrey Canada
"When my mother told me that Superman wasn't real, I started crying... I was crying because no one was going to save us."
ā Geoffrey Canada
"If we can go out and spend a billion dollars a day fighting a war that nobody understands, why can't we save America's children?"
ā Geoffrey Canada
Full Transcript
Thank you so much for the warm welcome. And you know, Jeff, I had this whole thing prepared about what I was going to say to introduce you and everything. And we got to talking back there. And I'm throwing that out the window because you know him from the Harlem Children's Zone.
And you've probably watched the 60 Minutes interview and all of that. And I asked Jeff, wait, you came out of retirement. Tell me the story. I think you need to share the story.
Well, I hope they're ready for this story because I had to tell Rosa this is just true. So I was retired for seven years. And people told me I would hate it. I loved it.
I mean, I just loved it. I've been on call 365 days a year for 25 years. The later it is, the worse the call. I'm retired.
If I get a call at 9 o'clock, it's my grandson. He wants $100. I can handle that. So I am happy and relaxed.
And this is true. God woke me up in the middle of the night and said, you've got to save another million kids. And my wife is a minister. And I woke up.
I said, honey, look, I just was ordered. I've got to save another million kids. And she said, let me get this straight. You've got no job.
You've got no money. You've got no staff. Good luck with that, all right? In three months, I had a job.
I had plenty of money. And I had a great staff. And one of the things I've learned, if God wants something to happen, it's just going to happen. So I am back, fully loaded.
But this is the other thing. This is the other thing I told Rosa, which I didn't understand. I wasn't back more than three to four weeks before COVID hit. Then I knew why I was summoned.
Because what happened to our children during COVID is something that I just don't think people understand what it means for children to lose one and a half, two years of school and then to send them right back to school and act like nothing happened. And all of us are going about our lives as if these young people's lives weren't traumatized. And I realized, if we don't do something really different in this country, we're going to lose a generation of children. And they're going to be talking about, oh, yeah, that's the COVID generation.
That's why those kids can't concentrate. That's why so many of them have mental health problems. And I know this is going to happen. And I told my wife, I wasn't going to be the angry black man today.
But I'm kind of angry. Because I don't think people are taking this thing seriously. And we, in this country, if we don't protect our children and save them, then we are going to undermine the basic principles of democracy in America. And I just won't see that happen.
Now, Jeff, I want us to dive into that a little deeper. Because to be honest with you, when I first learned about you, I was like, why can't we just clone this man and place him all over the country and fix this problem real quick? So how is it that you're going to be actually able to save these one million children? So this is one of the challenges.
So, OK, we're on 60 Minutes. I'm saying, there's Anderson Cooper. And he's talking to an economist from Harvard. And Jeff has eliminated the achievement gap.
And I was like, OK, the word is out. Everybody's going to come. Nobody came. I'm like, wait, all the failing schools in this country, and no one's coming and saying, how did you do this?
And part of what I understood was we have placed the burden of dealing with severe and intransigent poverty on our schools as if they are going to solve all the problems that poverty creates. And it just doesn't work. It's not fair. And the worst part is, if you look at the average superintendent, they get three years.
If you don't solve it in three years, you're out. And they bring the next person in. And they get three years. This has been going on and on and on.
These problems are deep and complicated. And we said, no, it's going to take us five to seven years of steady work to see the results of this work. And right now, we are opening up our doors to superintendents. This is our second superintendent's cohort that we have.
They're coming in, not just to learn what we're doing at the Harlem Children's Home, but there are other people all over this country that are doing terrific things in place-based work, working in neighborhoods. And I can take them to see what's going on in San Francisco. I can take them to see what's going on in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Spartanburg, South Carolina, that there are places that this is working. But Rosa, one of the things I say, education is the only business you don't need patent attorneys, because you can't give away a good idea.
No one's trying to steal your ideas. And so what we're saying to folks is, after decades of failure, let's come and find some tools that work. And let's change this. Let's teach schools, how do you collaborate with other entities, other organizations in your community?
They say, Jeff, how you do it? Yeah, we run schools. After school, about 75%, 80% of my kids are with me till 7 o'clock at night. Saturday, starting in October, we have Saturday school.
All July, we're in. So this ain't like no mystery thing. And I go to people and tell them, you know what they say? You're talking Saturdays, you're talking summertime.
No, there must be another way. I don't know another way. And part of what we're saying is, you school don't have to do it on your own. There are partners in your community that are yearning to come in and help work with those kids.
We've got to think about how do we begin to create these opportunities where we bring folks together. And we make sure these young folks have an opportunity to experience the American dream. You know, I love that philosophy, because it always comes down to hard work. There are really no shortcuts.
You can't say, oh, yeah, we're just going to shortcut this, and it'll be great, and we'll be solving all the issues. It usually involves hard work. I want to ask you about intergenerational poverty, because that was one of your goals, to end intergenerational poverty. And to be honest, I'm one of those poor kids who grew up on a dirt road in South Texas.
And it bothers me to no end when I hear people say that poor people are lazy, and that's why they're poor, or they're dehumanized because they're poor. And I grew up with the hardest working people, the most creative people. You figure out how to dress your family. You figure out how to put food on the table.
The most creative people come out of that pool, out of necessity. So I wanted to ask you about how to tackle those systemic failures that keep our society in poverty. So here's something that we figured out early. It's hard to save children if their parents are going downhill.
And folks keep thinking, well, we're just kids. But if that family is falling apart, if no one is going in to provide support for young people, this is typically what you'll see in lots of underperforming schools. You'll go into a classroom. You'll see 12 kids really paying attention.
You'll see four kids over there. They're nodding. They're sleeping. These kids over here, they're laughing and joking.
And you know what the teacher says? I'm going to teach the ones who want to learn. You know what I say? Why are those kids sleepy?
Go do a home visit. Find out, does this parent know their kid needs to go to bed and they need to get up on time? And how come these young people, we know they're hungry. How come no one is doing anything to help?
So this idea that it's the kid's problem. If you don't study hard and learn, that's on you. I grew up like you. I know what it's like to grow up and you don't have breakfast.
I know what it's like to be in the wintertime and there's no hot water and you can't take a shower and you go to school and you don't look good and you don't smell good and people are looking at you all funny. I know what that feels. There is so much, I think, obstacles, so many obstacles for young folks in poverty and their families. And you're right, hardworking people, salt of the earth people with no help.
And what we said is, why can't we bring help? Let's just bring help. If you're struggling, we're going to help you. And that's what the zone is.
It is about, you know, we say we work with 10,000 children and we do. But we work with 10,000 parents also because we try and make sure those parents know what it means to actually help and support their young people and what the resources are in their community because no one's telling them. You've got a 13-year-old who's severely depressed, don't want to get out of it. Well, you go to the home, you find often there's a mom who's depressed too.
So you're going to help the kid and forget about the mom? That doesn't make any sense. But schools aren't designed to do that, right? They're designed to work with the kids who are there.
We said, let's come up with a new paradigm where we think about the whole family. How do we support this family so that this young person has a chance? And sometimes that means taking care of essential needs, food, transportation, sometimes emergency help. Most of my family's $300 ruins their life.
I don't have $300. Why didn't you? My car broke down. It cost me $250.
I couldn't go to work. I lost my job. Really? With $300?
No. We'll give you $300. Get the car fixed. I mean, look at what we're going to have to do when you lose your job.
All of the welfare, fix the stupid car, let the person go on and keep their job. That's how we're thinking about this work. Thank you. The Olivia Pope of education.
Just fix it. Wait, I watch too much Scandal, so don't. But you know, that gets me to thinking about taking what you did in Harlem to scale around the country for those million kids. Where do you think is going to be the biggest challenge?
You know, it's interesting. I would have told you three years ago that the biggest challenge would have been the capital markets to do this work. This work is not cheap. But relative to, here's a couple of things I just need folks to think about.
Because they say, we spend about an extra $3,500 on a child per a year. This is not school costs. It's stop time. It's all the after school.
And people come to me and say, oh my goodness, Jeff, really? $3,500? Can't you get that number down? Because do the math. No, that's what it cost us.
In New York City, do you know what it costs to incarcerate a person for one year? I will tell you, y'all don't know, because it's crazy. It's not $100,000. It's not $200,000.
It's not $300,000. It's not for $550,000. And if you think in New York City, that mayor's race wasn't one on law and order, and how many folks are we going to lock up? You spend $500,000 for nothing.
You don't get people who can hold jobs. You don't get people who are connected to the community. We are willing to spend $500,000 on that person when he turns 18. And you don't want to spend $3,500 on a person when they're six.
And I just don't get the math. And there's something wrong with the way we're thinking about this world. I wanted to ask you about the emotional toll on some of these children and on the teachers who are working in these communities, and what your approach is when it comes to the emotional part. You know, we have a full complement of social workers.
In each one of my schools, I have a full doctor's office, a dental office, on that we're like, you know, I won't say the university. Someone said, Jeff, I want to do a grant with you to see if fixing kids' teeth and cavities will improve their math and reading scores. And I said, excuse me, you want to know if filling cavities so kids don't hurt is going to improve their reading and math scores. And I was like, well, that's ridiculous, right?
We want our kids to get regular cleanings and dental hygiene so they never get cavities. That's what you want to have. And have a relationship with your dentist. So many poor kids, that's the last thing because it's so expensive.
So we said, we're going to provide that service. Part of the challenge, I think, is we have created a set of circumstances where kids honestly feel like they're not going to make it. You know, the idea of waiting for Superman came from me being a little boy in the South Bronx and in the middle of a place that I knew kids didn't survive. And I told that story that I was a big comic book fan.
And when my mother told me that Superman wasn't real, I started crying. And she thought I was crying because there was no Easter bunny. But I was crying because no one was going to save us. And when I realized we weren't getting out of that place, I know people look at me and say, oh, Jeff, you got out.
Yeah, but I had three brothers. Only two of them got out. And my wife is from Harlem. She had three brothers and sisters.
None of them made it. When you see me getting so upset, I know what happens when you let children grow up in places that most of us wouldn't be caught dead, places where they said, don't go there at night, places where folks go, oh, my goodness, look at this. Young people who are growing up like I was growing up, they know what the expectation is for them. So if you want to know why we cleaned up Harlem, we created parks and playgrounds and got rid of the filth and the trash, I wanted my kids to come out and see a beautiful community that looked like the adults cared about them.
And that's what we were trying to do. The trauma that kids face growing up with the just indignities of poverty is something that we try to eliminate in our zone. People want to come. I'm going to give some secondhand clothes.
I got some secondhand toys not for my kids. I buy my kids new clothes and new toys. I want them to feel like somebody cares about them. This idea that you're poor and you're needy, it gets into your DNA.
And part of what we're saying to our kids is no, no, no. This is a different opportunity for you all. You all are going to all be successful. I have to tell you, Rosa, in our schools, our kids have a creed.
And at the end of the creed, they say, we will go to college. We will succeed. This is our promise, because it's called Promise Academy. This is our creed.
So I bring my young son. He was maybe about 12. And all the kids come out to class, and all of them say it in unison. And my son looks at me and says, Daddy, you're brainwashing these kids.
I said, yep, that's exactly what I'm doing. But listen to this. In two months, we'll have our graduation for our kids. For the fifth year, we'll have 100% of our kids' college acceptance.
And you know what the last thing those kids are going to say? When they stand up, they're going to say their creed for the last. And they've been saying that every year they've been with us. And it becomes true.
All of them are going to college. So when the juniors and the sophomores and others say, oh, so that's what this place is, huh? This thing is real. You begin to give kids a sense of hope that there's a way for them to make it out of here.
And I think that's what we have to do. And for the call to action, I wanted to ask you about your fierce urgency of now is how you reference it. What does it mean? Yeah, well, something's going on in our country.
It's not good. There's a lot of anger. There's a lot of pointing fingers. There's a lot of saying it's their fault.
People don't understand this is not an urban issue. It's not a black-brown issue. I go to rural America. I see the same exact challenges.
I go lots of places that folks don't even think about. And you see, oh, yeah, they're dealing with the same thing. This is what I believe. If we don't prepare this next generation for real jobs that pay a living wage, we're going to end up with a country we're not going to recognize.
And I am really worried about this. You know, you hear all this stuff about AI. They're going to take jobs. And I'm saying people are not taking this seriously.
People aren't really thinking what's going to happen if these folks don't have jobs. But William Julius Wilson, the institute I created, the reason I called it that is he wrote a book called When Work Disappears. And what that did was study a group of folks, mostly African-Americans, who came to Chicago for jobs, became middle class and working class, and then all those jobs left. And then you've got the drugs, you've got the crime, you've got the mental health problems, you've got the child abuse.
And what he said is, in our country, if jobs go, there is nothing holding that community together anymore, and it falls apart. And so I'm looking at what's happening. I'm saying, hey, guys, I want to pull the alarm. This thing is real.
It's happening right now. And this group of kids, this TikTok generation, this group that's used to everything being instantaneous, we are not preparing them for what's to come. This last issue. So Harvard teaches a case at the Harvard Business School.
They teach a case on the Harlem Children's Zone because our CEO, Kwame Usokesi, he went to the business school. So I'm there because I haven't seen the case, and the professors are talking. And one of the person says, you know, we don't do 90-minute classes anymore. I said, why?
Kids can't concentrate for 90 minutes. Did you talk about kids in the Harvard Business School? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, we don't do that anymore.
That's over. And I'm like, if these kids are struggling, what's happening to the rest of Americans' kids? And this issue is happening to us right now, and I need folks to understand that this is our country, that we should claim this back. If we can go out and spend a billion dollars a day fighting a war that nobody understands, why can't we save America's children?
Amen to that. And I think that's why the divine woke you up in the middle of the night and said, you've got to save another one million children. Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Canada. Give him a final round of applause.
Thank you.
This transcript was put together by our friend Philippos Savvides from Arizona State University. The original transcript and additional summit resources are available on GitHub. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.