The following grants were awarded in December 2012 for work in 2013 and 2014 (2-year grants are noted below). Total Grant Awards: $506,000
Southeast Mississippi Rural Health Initiative: Hattiesburg High School Health Clinic
Focus Area: Access to Youth Friendly Health Services
Geographic Area: Hattiesburg
Grant Award: $15,000
SeMRHI will increase youth-friendly health services at Hattiesburg High School Campus and Community Clinics by providing awareness and training for staff, providing screenings on site for youth, and utilizing youth advocates to address barriers to youth friendly services.
University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing: Midtown Teen Wellness Center at UNACARE
Focus Area: Access to Youth Friendly Health Services
Geographic Area: Jackson, MS
Grant Award: $41,000
The Midtown Teen Wellness Center is a collaboration between the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing, Mississippi State Department of Health and Mississippi State University Social Science Research Center to provide metro Jackson high school students access to primary and preventive health care and age-appropriate counseling (including contraceptive counseling, prenatal care, STI testing, treatment, prevention counseling) and to evaluate metro Jackson high school students’ utilization of and satisfaction with the clinic. The Teen Wellness Center will be open three days a week, from 4pm-7pm, and staffed by nurse practitioners associated with UMMC.
Mississippi First, Creating Healthy and Responsible Teens (C.H.A.R.T.)
Focus Area: Access to Evidence-Based Sex Education
Geographic Area: Statewide
Grant Award: $10,000
The C.H.A.R.T. initiative aims to reduce Mississippi’s rates of teen birth and sexually transmitted infections by advocating for the adoption and implementation of an abstinence-plus policy and an evidence-based sex education curriculum. This project is a continuation of the C.H.A.R.T. initiative and will focus on advocacy related to the implementation of sex education. This grant will enable Mississippi First to work with C.H.A.R.T. districts to implement medically accurate, evidence-based sex education as effectively and easily as possible.
Southern Bancorp Community Partners: Asset Builders Campaign
Focus Area: Asset Development and Financial Education
Geographic Area: Coahoma County
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
SBCP will provide credit counseling, financial education, and other asset building services to help low-wealth individuals (primarily single working mothers) build educational, financial and material assets and create better futures for their families. Having recently established a program office in Clarksdale, SBCP will emphasize increasing program participation through outreach.
CLIMB Community Development Corporation: Workforce Training Institute
Focus Areas: Leadership Development and Job Training
Geographic Area: Gulfport
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
In conjunction with the existing job training and personal development programs, CLIMB CDC will use an evidence-based sex education program and Health Department expertise to improve knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of at-risk women, ages 16 to 19. The program’s goals include employment, leadership, and pregnancy prevention.
Mississippi Council on Economic Education: IDA Program at Lanier High School
Focus Areas: Leadership Development and Asset Development
Geographic Area: Lanier High School (Jackson, MS)
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
Determined Individuals Vowing to be Assets (DIVAs) is a program to provide financial literacy education, entrepreneurship skills and successful creation of individual development accounts (IDAs) for 15 young women attending Lanier High School. The funds saved in the IDAs will be matched 2:1 up to $750 and will be saved for post-secondary education expenses. For more information on MCEE, click here.
Mississippi Center for Justice: Fair Lending Campaign
Focus Areas: Asset Development and Financial Literacy
Geographic Area: Statewide
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
The Campaign’s objective is to partner with employers and financial institutions across Mississippi to create new small dollar loan products with reasonable terms that low-wealth women can access through their jobs. This is the first initiative of its kind in Mississippi. MCJ will recruit employers to participate in an employer-based fair lending campaign in which they will be matched with banks and credit unions that create small dollar loan products for employees. Women will also have access to information about the pitfalls of payday lending and the importance of checking and savings bank accounts.
Institute of Southern Jewish Life: Talk About the Problems (T.A.P.)
Focus Areas: Leadership Development
Geographic Area: Jackson, MS
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
T.A.P., a peer mediation program, enlists middle school student leaders to help their peers resolve conflicts peacefully. In particular, mediation is a process that is used to address conflicts involving hurtful words before they escalate. By reducing student conflicts, particularly verbal and “clique”-related conflicts among girls, T.A.P improves the school environment and positively impacts student achievement. The majority of the students participating in the project has been and will continue to be young women. Due to a Black Student Law Association mentoring partnerships, young women are also exposed to the legal field as a potential career path.
Sunflower County Freedom Project: Freedom Fellowship
Focus Areas: Leadership Development
Geographic Area: Sunflower County
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
The purpose of the Freedom Fellowship is to work with at-risk youth over six years to ensure they receive intensive academic support and enrichment opportunities that will allow them to make smart decisions and be competitive college applicants when they graduate from high school. Fellowship program components include: core academic support, arts enrichment, health (including sex education), educational travel, and character development. One hundred percent of Fellows who complete all six years go on to enroll in a four-year college or university.
Mississippi Office of Nursing Workforce: Mississippi Delta Workforce Funding Collaborative
Focus Areas: Job Training
Geographic Area: Mississippi Delta
Grant Award: $40,000 (over 2 years)
The goal of this initiative is to develop a multi-dimensional approach to attract diverse, disadvantaged, low income women into health care careers by providing opportunities for career development that produce competent, skilled, health care workers; assist women as they transition from student to employment; and work with women as they transition into other health education programs as well as build a model reflective of the ethnicity and gender of our population. This initiative reflects the community college and sector industry commitment to a systematic approach to creating career pathways in health care for disadvantaged women. WFMS would join MHA’s existing collaborative partnership with W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Foundation for the Mid South, and various Delta-based community colleges.
Mississippi Community College Board: Two Generation Approach
Focus Area: Job Training
Geographic Area: Statewide
Grant Award: $160,000
This grant will provide tuition and wrap around support services (child care, transportation) for low-income, female students dually enrolled in Adult Basic Education/GED and Workforce, Career and Technical Education programs at the following five Mississippi community colleges: Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Meridian Community College, MS Delta Community College, Northeast MS Community College, and Pearl River Community College. Funding from the WFMS will help low-income female students matriculate into IT fields such as health information technology (HIT) and other technical fields in which females are traditionally underrepresented, and thereby enable targeted female students to earn self-sufficient wages.