Creating beauty in the midst of violence, carving out a space for light in the midst of industrial gloom and giving kids in the roughest neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and beyond the chance for dignity, self-worth and a promising future. For some, this might seem sheer idealism, but for Bill Strickland, it’s all in a life’s work.

Strickland, who spoke at Tulane on Tuesday (Jan. 31), received a McArthur Genius Grant for his work founding the Manchester Bidwell Corp., a jobs training center and community arts program. Marshalling funding from sources as disparate as Sen. John Heinz, the Episcopal Church and Jeffrey Skoll, the founder of eBay, Strickland built a center dedicated to “curing cancer of the spirit” and giving the economically disadvantaged a pathway to a dignified, prosperous life.

“People are born into the world as assets,” he insisted. “It’s all in the way you treat people ... and environments. Beautiful environments create beautiful kids. Prisons create prisoners.”

Strickland’s center, designed by an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright and furnished with a breathtaking art and furniture collection, provides tuition-free after-school programs in art, music, culinary arts, digital imaging and even chemical-technician training, in addition to career training for adults. Within a high dropout population, 90 percent of Strickland’s students graduate successfully.

Throughout its 26-year history the center has been spared from the Manchester neighborhood’s endemic crime, which Strickland attributes to the program’s success and the mutual respect engendered from treating disadvantaged kids as first-class citizens.

Strickland said he intends to build 200 similar centers worldwide. Three — in Grand Rapids, Mich., San Francisco and Cincinnati — are already in operation.

“Our country’s going down fast,” Strickland warned. “We’ve got kids with high school diplomas they can’t read; this has to stop, or we’re not going to make it.”

He appeared on campus for the NewDay Social Entrepreneurship Distinguished Speakers Series.

Cody Wild is a sophomore at Tulane, studying English and political economy.