Foundation For The Mid South Inc

Programs: Education: the education program area focuses on activities and initiatives that will enable students across arkansas, louisiana and mississippi to attain a high school diploma/ged, to successfully matriculate through college, and/or to secure gainful employment. The goal is to increase student learning, high school graduation rates, college readiness, and job-skill preparedness across the mid-south region. The current males of color grantees are predominantly service organizations with deep roots in their respective communities. They continue to build partnerships and collaborate with other firmly established community entities such as local businesses, school boards, fire departments, and city councils. These public/private partnerships help the groups increase their sustainability, while also raising awareness of the programs, and establishing built-in advocates. These groups continue to be a part of the systemic change process happening in their communities. There were several major milestones accomplished in this final year. - the 2017 males of color grantee convening was hosted in little rock, ar at the university of ar pine bluff - stem conference center. The purpose of the convening was to allow grantees the opportunity to network amongst each other, understand what is needed to improve academic skills as well as social skills among males of color for success. - grantees learned to use the power of storytelling in changing the narrative of this work in their communities. Several programs successfully used social media to inform their target communities on special events, educate them on developments in the work and highlight accomplishments. - grantees were also informed and used ways to extend their work to include more services for males of color. Resources around advocacy, liability, leveraging support and trauma informed care were among those components highlighted in reporting and shared at the 2017 convening. - grantees were supported in developing research abstracts for their work to present them at professional conferences.

community development: recognizing the need for community development across the region, the foundation seeks to invest in municipalities, organizations, and people to help them develop solutions to allow their communities to grow and prosper. We do this by pursuing changes in systems and policy, including changes in coordination of services, contextualization of literacy and occupation skill development, combination of on-the job training and occupational skill development, development of career paths, strengthening the workplace to be a learning place, and improving policies. Accomplishments include:- the mississippi delta workforce funding collaborative has plans to work with members and other stakeholders to host a serious of convenings in 2018 with topics ranging from braided funding to engaging men of color in job searches. As an intermediary with relationships already established within a broad group of state agency, private and public sectors, the collaborative will work to bring more groups to the table to create new, innovative approaches to pilot. - public allies mississippi successfully launched its second cohort in november of 2017. The cohort began their 10-month service with a week-long orientation at eagle ridge conference center. The cohort was greeted by public allies mississippi staff along with hinds community college staff upon arrival. During the week, the allies participated in workshops on creative team building, leadership lecture series, and equity ownership. The culmination of the orientation included the allies oral presentations about their goals for the service period both personally and for their partner organizations. In january during the weekly friday leadership development meetings the allies along with their staff supervisor made the decision to incorporate friday forum into their agenda. Friday forum is a local, community driven meeting on friday mornings that invites speakers to come and directly engage with the community members. Allies were so excited about the first meeting that they requested an opportunity to present at a future meeting themselves. - finalization of new grantee work plans took place during the month of december. Among the work planned for the twelve-month cycle are reentry related training and expanding career pathway recognition to younger age groups. Community development staff will be working closely with our third-party evaluation team to monitor and offer technical assistance for grantees. To help develop better plans partners were invited in december to participate in a poll related to scheduling evaluation meetings which were ultimately scheduled for the end of february. The planning of these initial meetings began in late november and includes site visits at all grantee locations over the course of the initial three-day period.

wealth building: the foundation's goal for the wealth building agenda is to enable families to build financial security. The foundation believes that building wealth requires increased access to effective financial programs and information. When families possess the tools and knowledge to improve their finances, they can begin to grow their savings, maximize their incomes, and acquire assets. The strategies to achieve this goal include: - financial competency: supporting activities that expand access to knowledge and resources to strengthen adult and youth financial competency. - asset building: empowering people with limited financial resources to accumulate and preserve long-term, productive assets, such as homes, education, and businesses. Financial competency:the foundation for the mid south provided financial training to 51 participants in new way mississippi reentry program. These individuals had the opportunity to learn skills that will help them obtain employment and transition back into work. The foundation supported this process and provided essential financial information on the importance of saving, budgeting and credit management. They were challenged to set goals and work toward a brighter financial future. As a component of our workforce development program, financial training was added to the curriculum. The foundation will partner with junior colleges in the mississippi delta, capitol area and gulf coast region. The initial workforce development training was held on november 8, 2017 at mississippi delta community college. The participants were students enrolled in the lineman program. The financial training was done in partnership with mississippi state university extension service. The topics included: understanding our decision-making, path to financial wellness, financial education, real world budget simulation and debrief and goal setting. Two sessions were completed and a total of 33 students participated. The training provided students with a strong foundation for making sound financial decisions. Public allies is a workforce development program that provides young males of color employment in the non-profit sector, as well as leadership development training. In coordination with these services, the foundation also provided financial training. During the trainings, the participants learned how to read pay stubs, develop a budget and understand credit. Financial literacy training was provided to 92 teachers in arkansas by our grantee, economics arkansas during the summer. The teachers acquired knowledge and resources to make better financial decisions for themselves, as well as, teach the subject matter with greater understanding to their pre-k - 12 students. The training sessions covered: saving, banking, credit, goal setting and money managers. The foundation provided approximately 500 toolkits to the mississippi department of education, career technical education. The toolkits were used to provide financial training for 12th grade students. In addition, the foundation provided approximately 400 toolkits to the volunteer tax preparation sites and other organizations for distribution including: wwisca, greater hinds street baptist church community development corporation, multi-county community service agency, hope credit union and boys leadership. The toolkit includes information on how to build and protect your wealth. Asset building:the foundation sponsored earned income tax credit (eitc) events on saturday, january 28, 2017. One event was held in meridian and the other in greenville, mississippi. The purpose of the events was to provide free tax preparation and financial training, as well as, increase eitc awareness. The other partners included: fdic alliance for economic inclusion, mississippi state university extension service, aarp, united way, multi-county community service agency, warren-washington-issaquena-sharkey community action agency, inc. (wwisca), greater hinds street church community development corporation, regions bank, hope federal credit union, trustmark national bank, bankplus and internal revenue service. There were approximately 40 people in attendance in meridian and 15 in greenville, mississippi. The foundation is partnering with hope policy institute to develop legislation for a refundable state earned income tax credit in arkansas and mississippi, which will resemble the federal program. We will work to create community awareness and bipartisan support by developing collaborative partnerships with government, private and community organization, as well as community leaders. State eitc benefits include: (1) helping working families make ends meet - cover basic needs (2) keep families working - cover child care and transportation cost (3) reduce poverty, especially among children - nearly 10 million children in working families lived below the official poverty line (about $24,000 for a family of four) and (4) have a lasting effect - children in low-income families that get an income boost like eitc provides tend to do better and go farther in school.