Our Founder - Dr. Sokoni Karanja
Sokoni Karanja means “A person from across the sea with knowledge” in Swahili. He founded the Centers for New Horizons (CNH) in Chicago, a social service in the Bronzeville neighborhood to restore it as a self-sufficient community with pride in its African and Black American history. He was inspired by Malcolm X, Julius Nyere, and the Black Metropolis of the 1920s. In the early 1970s, he lived in and traveled around Tanzania building communities and schools. He was the Assistant Dean of Students at Brandeis University. He has been recognized as an expert in childhood and community development.
In 1971, Centers for New Horizons (Centers) was founded to operate five newly constructed childcare centers built by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). The state of Illinois asked Chicago Commons, a 100-year-old social service agency in Chicago, to operate the centers, but Chicago Commons’ Executive Director Frank Seever advocated strongly that persons of African American descent should operate the new sites. He reached out to Sokoni Karanja, who had recently completed his dissertation research in Tanzania. Informed by this and other experiences, Karanja, et al founded the newly organized agency on two core ideas: 1) low-income African American children can learn at high levels, and 2) culture is the key to the healthy development of African American children, families, and communities in providing the values, traditions and shared history that builds a strong sense of identity and purpose.
From 1971 to 1973, five childcare centers were built on the sites of the public housing projects in Bronzeville. The Edison L. Hoard Center, named for Centers’ first Board of Directors Chair and strong supporter, opened in the Robert Taylor Homes. This was followed by centers in Robert Taylor South, Ida B. Wells Homes, Stateway Gardens, and an infant-toddler center in Washington Park Homes. A sixth site, James Pitts Center, was opened to serve children 3-5 years of age in Head Start.
These first centers embodied the two founding principles, ones that remain central to Centers’ work today:
The curriculum is research-based and culturally responsive, taught by highly qualified teachers and staff who deeply believe that ALL children can learn at high levels.
Culture is foundational. At Centers for New Horizons, staff, children, and youth are taught to live through a set of traditional African values that are truly universal, such as—community, unity, collective work, and economic cooperation. Children and youth learn about African and African American s/heroes; staff read and discuss classics of the African Diaspora.
In addition to the first early learning centers, a grant funded by the New World Foundation provided three community organizers to build parent participation in the centers and in the community. Parent Policy Councils were subsequently organized that provided parents a voice in hiring, curriculum, and other aspects of center governance and management. By the end of 1973, Centers was serving over 500 children with a staff of over 100 people, 70% of whom were community residents. Later, in 1982, at the request of the United Way of Chicago, Centers assumed operations of an early learning center in Altgeld Gardens, a far south side community.
In the late 1970s, the Parent Council members asked Centers for New Horizons to expand its programs to help families better address economic and parenting needs. Through a new Health and Human Services division, Centers added counseling, foster care, a food co-op, and a Family Development Institute, a “school” for parents that taught nutrition and fitness, home management, parenting and discipline, and how to get and keep jobs. Health outreach and senior outreach programs followed. At the same time, Centers added culturally responsive programs to encourage school-aged children to stay in and succeed in school and for nearly ten years, ran its own school, First Contact. In response to growing economic stresses, Centers ran a food co-op for several years as well as a community development corporation, Ahkenaton.
By the late 1980s, with growing community needs and finite resources, Centers turned more centrally to the strategy of developing partnerships, rooted in its conviction that the African American community has within itself the capacity to heal and build, and that, while investments from outside the community are needed, they should be guided by the community. From this principle, Centers helped organize:
The GREAT Coalition (1982), a group of community institutions and leaders who sought to build community capacity for collective action;
The South Side Partnership (1989), a group of community, banking, and philanthropic leaders that leveraged missions of dollars of community investment, including a facelift of King Drive that extends into Chinatown;
The Mid South Planning and Development Commission (1992), which grew out of a community plan spearheaded by the South Side Partnership;
Parent Power (1989), engaging hundreds of Bronzeville parents in the campaign for school reform legislation;
The Wells Community Initiative (1989), an effort to build a healthy, participatory community within the Ida B. Wells Homes;
The Grand Boulevard Youth Consortium (1994), a collaborative of organizations that sought to strengthen the community’s response to children and youth;
The Lugenia Burns Hope Center (1995), a leadership development and organizing institute for Bronzeville;
The Grand Boulevard Federation (1996), a community collaborative that grew out of a State human services delivery re-design project;
The Phillips Charette (1996), a community collaboration that gained $12 million in capital improvements and new leadership for Wendell Phillips Academy High School; and
The South Side Credit Union (2003), a community development financial institution that seeks to increase residents’ access to banking, savings, and fair lending services.
While continuing to participate in partnerships, Centers has focused on continuous improvement of its own programs and services. Centers has:
Gained accreditation of the entire organization by the Council on Accreditation (COA);
Previously held National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accreditation of six of its early learning centers, instituting a nationally recognizing research-based curriculum and adding programs like State Pre-Kindergarten;
Created employment programs to address families’ economic self-sufficiency needs more directly; and
Expanded it’s after-school programs, creating a Youth and Family Development Program and, within it, a model “community school” within Wendell Phillips Academy High School.
With the demolition of the public housing that domiciled so many of Centers for New Horizons’ families, Centers has stepped up its efforts over the past few years to provide stability for families in transition. This has included such programs as Workforce Development targeted at both youth and adult employability and career paths, keeping their early learning centers open by relocating them in schools and other facilities, providing outreach and assistance in maintaining stable housing, serving as a response team for Elder Abuse, and assisting children through foster care to find permanency in adopted homes or returned to their birth parents. Centers has also launched its Health & Wellness programs targeting obesity and its related illnesses in young children and adults in public housing. Likewise, Centers continues to work in Community Building through organizing and supporting such entities as Bronzeville Alliance and the 741 or Seven Agencies, Four Communities with One Goal of Employment.
Through the years, Centers for New Horizons has received affirming accolades for its work. Centers is a past recipient of the Chicago Community Trust’s James Brown IV award and the Sara Lee Foundation’s Spirit Award.
In 1994, Dr. Karanja received the Bank of America Foundation’s Neighborhood Builders Award. In 2008 and 2009, Centers was selected as one of the 101 Best & Brightest Workplaces.
Today, Centers continues as a leader on the cutting edge of best practices in education and innovation in community building, focusing on the present and future, as it always has, on building “Kujitegumea” or Self-Reliance.