The Benton Harbor Promise Zone is a program that provides college scholarships to students graduating from high schools in Benton Harbor. The scholarship amounts are equivalent to two years at a community college. The project — a key element of a larger, very ambitious effort to transform the City of Benton Harbor — is to bring jobs, housing and hope to the community by encouraging families with children to move back into the community; spawn new economic development; increase the city’s tax base; and build on other efforts to strengthen the educational outcomes and long-term economic and social welfare of the city’s children.