Spring Initiative Grant

Introduction

Spring Initiative is an intensive and innovative after-school program based in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Spring Initiative creates groups of around fifteen at-risk students (called “cohorts”) and works with them from early elementary school to graduation. These students are given additional support in all academic subjects, but a major focus of the program is reading. The students attending Spring Initiative have shown enormous progress due to the influence of a consistently positive environment, which has inspired the program’s quick expansion since its founding in 2011. In its five years of operation, Spring Initiative has had astonishing success, with seven members getting accepted to Piney Woods, a college prep boarding school, and several now applying for college.

Spring Initiative also aids the Delta community at large. When nine children under the age of twelve were left alone after their parents’ arrest, Spring staff watched over them for an entire week until the situation improved. When a mother had a heart attack and could not afford to call an ambulance, Spring staff drove her to the hospital. The leaders of Spring Initiative are highly educated, with degrees in diverse subjects such as history, business, and nursing. In addition, Spring Initiative hires expert support staff, most notably a therapist with whom the students may regularly meet. With its round-the-clock support structure, Spring Initiative is able to change the lives of its participants and help to solve the issues of substandard education and generational poverty found in the Mississippi Delta.

Needs Assessment

In the five years since Spring Initiative began, it has grown enormously. The number of students has tripled, the full-time staff has doubled, and an increasing number of part-time employees are involved in the program. Furthermore, the financial needs of Spring Initiative are growing as the participants age. Providing constant support for so many people becomes expensive. Spring gives financial aid to those attending Piney Woods and will potentially support students going to college if they require it. Spring Initiative also takes students on college visits and exposes them to as wide of a range of life options as possible. All of these things are critical to the success of the program, and as such Spring Initiative truly requires the money.

With regards to its reading program, Spring Initiative makes heavy use of volunteers to give all students individual attention. The money from this grant would be used to hire more consistent help on reading days, as well as to expand the library of reading materials. The school system in the Mississippi Delta is often abusive, beating and insulting them for perceived lack of effort. Volunteers in many other programs, such as Teach Across America, only stay for a couple of years, so these students are used to mentor figures leaving them. They truly need a source of constant support, and Spring Initiative attempts to provide that for them. With the funding from this grant, Spring will be able to hire more consistent reading assistance, which will in turn boost the students’ reading levels as they become more confident with the people with whom they work.

The problems that Spring Initiative faces cannot be solved quickly or easily. They are generational issues, stemming from centuries old racism and poverty. However, consistent, individual support has been shown to have a huge impact on children, and by granting Spring Initiative this grant, they will be able to give that support to many more. For this reason, Spring Initiative respectfully asks the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to consider a grant of $175,000 for the expansion of their reading program to help impoverished children in the Mississippi Delta.