What is Promise?

Central Promise is a community-wide movement catalyzed by the Sisters of Charity Foundation (SOCF) and led by diverse partners, including residents, who are committed to making Central Promise families safe, healthy, educated, financially secure and rich in social capital. Originally the Central Promise movement was fueled by the opportunity to secure federal funding to support a continuum of education outcomes in a geographic area within Cleveland's Central neighborhood.

The Promise Neighborhood operates with Cleveland Central residents at the forefront, believing they are the ones who have the biggest impact in leading their neighborhood. The Promise Neighborhood engages these volunteers by providing leadership training, resource information, and tools to support them in connecting and sharing with their neighbors those opportunities that provide quality learning for their children.

The Promise Neighborhood also partners with the nonprofits, early child care providers, schools, public housing, libraries and businesses that provide the direct resources to families to ensure their effectiveness through communication and collaboration. It also seeks to identify gaps that can be filled by these partners or others.

To sustain their work together, the partners use the collective impact framework. Collective impact is a framework for diverse interests to achieve shared goals by building shared understanding, catalyzing the co-creation of shared goals and strategies to achieve those goals, and shared governance to sustain and coordinate their collective efforts.