President Envisions Anti-Poverty Efforts Like Harlem's 'Zone'

Budget outline calls for 'Promise Neighborhoods'

President Barack Obama is looking to lessons learned from a high-profile program in New York City in his bid to create "Promise Neighborhoods" to improve the lives of children living in poverty.

Mr. Obama's fiscal 2010 budget proposal calls for such neighborhoods that would be modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone , a nonprofit community agency that runs a broad-based program to meet the educational, health, and social-service needs of residents in a 97-block area of New York.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would create Promise Neighborhoods across the nation at a cost of "a few billion dollars" annually, targeting areas with high crime and poverty rates...