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Tough has written extensively about education, child development, poverty and politics.

Paul Tough, former editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine and author of the critically acclaimed book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, will speak on Thursday, Dec. 2 at 5:30 p.m. at the University of Georgia Chapel.

Canada, the principal figure in Tough’s Whatever It Takes, is the 58-year-old president of the Harlem Children’s Zone—a non-profit organization that provides education and support for more than 10,000 children and their families across 97 city blocks—where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty and education in America.

Canada also stands out as a voice of hope in director Davis Guggenheim’s grim, new documentary film on the failure of public education, “Waiting for Superman.”

Canada’s conclusion on what it takes: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives—their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents, reports Tough.

The radical Harlem experiment involves creating an interlocking web of services targeted at the poorest and least likely to succeed children: establishing programs to prepare and support parents, health clinics, a demanding K-8 charter school and a charter High School, support for students once they are enrolled in college and a range of after-school programs for high school students.  More information about the Harlem Children’s Zone is available at HCZ.org.

Tough’s knowledge of Canada’s work should be of great local interest:

Tough's critically acclaimed book focuses on Geoffrey Canada's work as president of the Harlem Children's Zone.

In recent months, a new local initiative patterned after Canada’s work called “Whatever It Takes” (www.witathens.org) was formed to address the poverty problem, by setting a goal that by July 1^st, 2020 every child in Athens-Clarke County will be on track to graduate from some sort of post-secondary education.

The University of Georgia’s College of Education and School of Public & International Affairs have been involved with Whatever It Takes Athens since its inception. Students, faculty and administrators from both schools are serving as committee members, interns and researchers. Involvement with the initiative is providing real world experience for the students and a vehicle for increased involvement in the Athens community for both UGA students and faculty.

In October, the initiative won a $500,000 planning grant from the federal Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhood program. The grant was part of $10 million in funding the Obama administration awarded to 21 neighborhood groups across the country to help plan their own versions of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The one-year grant will be used by Whatever It Takes Athens to collaborate with local government, non-profit agencies and businesses to create a network of cradle-to-career services to boost the educational achievement and healthy development of children in Athens.

President Obama is currently seeking $210 million to implement the program in cities around the country next year, although appropriations committees in the Senate and the House have earmarked only $20 million and $60 million, respectively. If funds are approved in Washington, Whatever It Takes Athens will apply for more than $10 million to put their own local network into action.

Tough has written extensively about education, child development, poverty and politics, including cover stories in the New York Times Magazine on the Harlem Children’s Zone, the post-Katrina school system in New Orleans, No Child Left Behind and charter schools.

He has worked as an editor at Harper’s Magazine and was the founding editor of Open Letters, an online magazine. He has also worked as a reporter and producers for the public radio program, “This American Life,” where he reported most recently on the parents enrolled in the Harlem Children Zone’s Baby College. His writing has also appeared in Slate, GQ, Esquire and the New Yorker and on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

After his talk, Tough will take questions from the audience. There will be copies of his book Whatever It Takes for sale at the event as well.  He is currently working on a new book titled, The Success Equation, to be published in 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Tough’s appearance is co-sponsored by Whatever It Takes Athens, the UGA College of Education,  the UGA School of Public & International Affairs’ Master’s of Public Administration program and the Athens Housing Authority.