Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America

In-depth stories of large-scale social programs that are successfully transforming troubled inner-city neighborhoods and communities — and the reasons they are successful.

In her previous book, Within Our Reach, now with over 85,000 copies in print, renowned Harvard social analyst Lisbeth B. Schorr examined cutting-edge pilot social programs that were successful in helping disadvantaged youth and families, but which, upon expansion, failed to thrive Since then, Schorr has spent the past seven years researching large-scale programs across the country that are promising to reduce, on a community- or citywide level, child abuse, school failure, teenage pregnancy, and welfare dependence. Common Purpose offers a welcome antidote to our current sense of national despair. It provides examples of private and public bureaucracies that are successfully nurturing programs flexible and responsive to the community, and whose clear, long-term goals permit staff to exercise individual judgment in helping the disadvantaged. Schorr shows readers how small-scale pilot social programs can be adapted on a large scale, and offers concrete proof that America's social institutions can be made to work so that all the nation's children develop the tools to share in the American dream.

"This terrific book helps all of us know what can be done about the staggering problems faced by children today. Lisbeth Schorr has carefully explored what does work and how to make it work for every child in our rich nation. Read and act on this important book." — Marian Wright Edelman

"This is a book full of hope and possibility — an extraordinary account of what can be done, is being done to make this a better, stronger, more decent, and honorable nation." — Robert Coles

Schorr presents in-depth stories of large-scale social programs that are successfully transforming troubled inner-city neighborhoods and communities--and tells the reasons why they work. "Read and act on this important book".--Marian Wright Edelman.

In her previous book, Within Our Reach, renowned Harvard social analyst Lisbeth Schorr examined pilot social programs that were successful in helping disadvantaged youth and families. But as those cutting-edge programs were expanded, the very qualities that had made them initially successful were jettisoned, and less than half of them ultimately survived. As a result, these groundbreaking programs never made a dent on the national or statewide level.

Lisbeth Schorr has spent the past seven years researching and identifying large-scale programs across the country that are promising to reduce, on a community- or citywide level, child abuse, school failure, teenage pregnancy, and welfare dependence. From reformed social service agencies in Missouri, Michigan, and Los Angeles to "idiosyncratic" public schools in New York City, she shows how private and public bureaucracies are successfully nurturing programs that are flexible and responsive to the community, that have set clear, long-term goals, and that permit staff to exercise individual judgment in helping the disadvantaged. She shows how what works in small-scale pilot social programs can be adapted on a large scale to transform whole inner-city neighborhoods and reshape America.

On the heels of the federal government's dismantling of welfare guarantees, Common Purpose offers a welcome antidote to our current sense of national despair, and concrete proof that America's social institutions can be made to work to assure that all the nation's children develop the tools to share in the American dream.