AFCC members recently attended the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) annual luncheon. Attendees of the 2018 AFCC Annual Conference may remember NAZ’s CEO Sondra Samuel spoke on a panel which focused on how different communities of color developed resiliency in their families. Those who have seen the documentary Broken Places, which was shown by the AFCC last spring, will recall that the NAZ is featured as a collaboration which uses early intervention and coaching to create high expectations that newborns in the Northside Minneapolis community will graduate from college.
Geoffrey Canada, who created a similar widely acclaimed program in Harlem which was the brainchild for NAZ was the featured speaker. Attending the luncheon was current and past AFCC presidents Jim Street, Jack DeWalt and Victoria Brenner, AFCC board members Dr. Jordan Hart and Melissa Chawla, AFCC members Rachel Sibley and Anna Street and Adeola Adekunle, Referee Street’s new law clerk who came from Georgia after completing a fellowship at the University of Georgia Law Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic.