"When community activist Diana Buza read about plans to clone the Harlem Children's Zone with government funding, she said, "Count me in."

But she's far from Manhattan; Buza lives in Cortez, Colo., and runs The Pinon Project, which helps low-income residents — many of them Native American — learn how to be better parents and find health care and day care.

"When I read the Harlem project's success rate, it was something like 87 percent of the children involved improved increased their academic skills," Buza says. "I was like, 'That's a no brainer.' "

The Harlem Children's Zone is a widely-praised program that is fighting the effects of poverty in a poor section of New York City. Now, the Obama administration wants to spread this program around the country by giving out federal grants to so-called "Promise Neighborhoods." The program is trying to encourage rural and tribal communities to apply, but the areas face obstacles as they try to emulate a program that was developed to combat urban poverty."

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Lessons From Harlem Take Root In Tribal Lands (NPR 6/25)