Meridian Freedom Project debuts Monday

MERIDIAN A project designed to open doors for Meridian students will be announced Monday.

The Meridian Freedom Project is a year-round after-school program for middle school and high school and high school students in the Meridian Public School District. Slated to open in June 2014, the program seeks to build a corps of academically capable, socially conscious and mentally disciplined young leaders in Meridian.

"We're replicating the Sunflower County Freedom Project (SCFP) and will be the first affiliate of that project," said Anna Stephenson, who serves as program development director of the Meridian Freedom Project (MFP).

In 1998, Sunflower County Freedom Project founders and Teach For America alumni Chris Myers-Asch, Shawn Raymond and Gregg Costa set out to establish a program to create more pathways to college for their students in Sunflower County. Fifteen years later, 100 percent of the students completing the Freedom Fellowship, a six-year-commitment to the Freedom Project, go on to attend four-year colleges and universities across the country.

As SCFP's first expansion site of the newly formed Freedom Project Network, the Meridian Freedom Project will allow for future Freedom Projects. MFP will honor the legacy of the Meridian Freedom Schools at its opening during summer 2014, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer '64. The Freedom Projects are led by Teach For America Alumna who returned to their roots to teach in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta. SCFP Executive Director Vaish Shastry is from Pine Bluff, Ark., while both of Stephenson's parents are native Mississippians, her father, a native of Meridian.

"I am thrilled to help grown the Freedom Project in Meridian," Stephenson said. I have seen the power it has on Freedom Fellows in Sunflower, and I cannot wait to watch it transforms the lives of our Meridian students."

According to Stephenson, the idea behind MFP is "to create another opportunity for kids to find a pathway to college." The project's success is attributed to its dedication to providing year-round rigorous core academic support, arts enrichment, health and fitness training, character development and educational travel. Freedom Fellows those who participate in the project live by four LEAD principals: Love, Education, Action and Discipline. By practicing these principles of the Freedom Project, participants become leaders in their schools and communities.

Support for the MFP began with Parents for Public Schools graduates who traveled to Sunflower in 2012 to tour the program. According to Stephenson, they were immediately hooked. The MFP Board Amy Elliott, chairman; Dr. Bill Scaggs, president emeritus of Meridian Community College; and Flo Bradley, CEO of FloBradley.com established an administrative collaboration with The Montgomery Institute.

"Observing the young people engaged in Sunflower as they live the LEAD principles is a 'game-changing' experience," Scaggs said. "They demonstrate remarkable self-respect and optimism, as well as a couple of old fashioned characteristics: grit and gumption!"

The Meridian Freedom Project is geared to students in grades sixth through 12th in the Meridian Public School District, beginning with those in grades sixth through eighth and progressing with them until they graduate from high school.

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Meridian Freedom Project debuts Monday