Promise Zone Celebrates Real Progress In Poor Neighborhoods

A program aimed at making sure neighborhoods in our area, like Del Paso Heights, Twin Rivers and South Sacramento get the help they need so badly celebrates three years of success with a look to the future. 

Sacramento's Promise Zone has already brought in more than $66 million to help with health programs, job training and education.

It's all done through a coming-together of local officials, businesses, non-profits and other organizations who are squeezing the most out of everything they can get their hands on.

Up-and-coming rapper "Saweetie," who considers Sacramento home after moving here from Hayward before she started high school has worked with another local organization, Kick'n It, to provide $20 thousand in scholarships for young women in our area, which she says helps those girls 'learn to navigate through life'. 

"We only get one life to live," Saweetie says, "I've heard this growing up, but we don't get our younger years back, so if we could do them at least close to perfect, I'd like to help them do that."

Chris Strachan, a.k.a. Coseezy, turned his love of "sneakers" into Kick'n It For A Cause, which has helped Saweetie raise that scholarship money. Kick'n It also collects shoes for people who need them, including 30,000 pair for people in Congo. Coseezy says we take it for granted we can get new kicks from the local shoe store. In Congo, they need them to protect their feet from hookworms that live in contaminated ground. 

"They're walking barefoot on it, and these hookworms are getting into their feet," Strachan says, "and then they end up losing the ability to walk, or they get a fever that they don't have the ability to fix, and they're dying because of that all because they don't have a pair of shoes."

The remaining seven years in the 10-year Promise Zone program includes a focus on "opportunity zones", which allows businesses to come invest in exchange for a break on their taxes as well as more affordable housing in those areas.


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