We Shall Overcome Fund
Grants - January 2009

During the grant cycle ending January 15, 2009, the We Shall Overcome Fund awarded twelve $1,000 grants. The following is a list of recipients and a brief description of their projects:

2nd Chance Organization, Inc. (Lexington, MS) -
"Where are the Children?"
"Where are the Children" is an intergenerational project to analyze and address the dropout rate in communities that 2nd Chance works with in Holmes County, MS. 2nd Chance will travel throughout the community using video storytelling to document the stories of youth and adults as a way to better understand how some people have been "lost through the crack" and to give a voice in the community to a group who has largely been unheard.

Action Communication and Education Reform (Duck Hill, MS) -
Project CAM
Project CAM (cultural arts and multi-media) is an intergenerational, technology, communication and education program. Project CAM will conduct a week-long residential arts workshop with youth in the community based on the history and struggles of African Americans in Montgomery County. Community members and civil rights workers who have first-hand knowledge of the struggle of Montgomery County will be invited to participate and share their stories.

African American Connection of the Performing Arts (Cave Spring, GA) - "Remembering Our Past and Securing Our Future"
The African American Connection of the Performing Arts (AACPA) will present an original play highlighting the importance of education in community empowerment and liberation. The learning activities in the months leading up to the January 2010 debut will involve participatory research in collaboration with other local organizations to learn about the ideas, work, and contributions of people in history who have used education as a force for social change. The actors, orators and behind-the-scenes people involved in the production will be participants in the learning activities. Through this project, grassroots African American people will use creative expression to illustrate the ways that education, freedom and empowerment are interconnected.

Black Community Developers, Inc. (Little Rock, AR) -
Non-violence through Literacy
Black community Developers, through its Youth Initiative Project, will develop a program focused on youth ages 13-19 to improve reading, writing and public speaking skills through research projects that document and share the history of the Civil Rights Movement, specifically related to Dr. M. L. King and the non-violent movement. Students will visit the King Center in Atlanta and interact with civil rights elders and/or persons whose family members were active in the movement. Also, a non-violent movement component will be added to their existing Youth Initiative Project as a means to enhance conflict resolution skills in the participants.

The Carpetbag Theatre, Inc. (Knoxville, TN) -
Youth Theatre Festival
Carpetbag Theatre (CBT) is a community based professional theater company that will use the We Shall Overcome Fund grant to support their Youth Theater Festival (YTF). The festival renders messages of social change through theatrical arts while empowering young people to assume ownership of the issues that affect society, particularly in the Appalachian region. Participants of the festival obtain much needed skills and attitudes that enable them to make the life choices that prevent them from following a path of self-destruction. Social interaction and cultural programming offering messages pertaining to the struggle for justice create meaningful cultural exchange and increase the participants' knowledge of social action concepts. The festival serves youth in Knox and Anderson counties.

Emerging ChangeMakers Network (Mobile, AL) -
Selma Leadership Summit
The Selma Leadership Summit brings young leaders from the Deep South to Selma, Alabama to connect around strategies for building healthy communities. This annual meeting happens on the backdrop of the Bridge Crossing Jubilee Celebration's Re-enactment of the "Bloody Sunday" march from Selma to Montgomery. The summit features participation in the official Jubilee activities, tours of the National Voting Rights Museum and Slavery Museum and a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which reminds us that other bridges must still be crossed.

Jean Childs Young Institute for Youth Leadership (Atlanta, GA) -
Youth Leadership Program: Youth Empowerment Forum 2009
The Youth Leadership Training Program is specifically tailored to youth members who tend to be non-traditional leaders not attracted to typical youth leadership programs. The Institute works in partnership with these youth to enhance their leadership skills, analyze the conditions they face, develop projects and activities to address these conditions, and carry these projects into the community to involve other youth. During Youth Empowerment Forum 2009, youth members will plan and facilitate a leadership forum in which up to 200 youth will be invited to participate.

Kaleidoscopic Productions (Bowie, MD) -
Celebrating Our Civil Rights Legacy
"Celebrating Our Civil Rights Legacy" is a series of African-American Civil Rights concerts/workshops consisting of African-American folksongs that teach the audience participants about the struggles and triumphs of the people of the Civil Rights Movement. The initial series of concerts will be held at the Rutilio Grande House in Takoma Park, MD, which is a place of refuge, hospitality, diversity and extended family for people suffering from social injustice, especially immigrant refuges, individuals, and families displaced by war or circumstances of poverty and personal hardship. The intent of the performance is to educate participants about the African-American experience during the Civil Rights Era, to serve as a bridge to others who are experiencing social injustice and unite and mentor people of the African Diaspora, here as well as abroad, who are experiencing racial discrimination.

Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction (M.U.G.A.B.E.E.) (Utica, MS) - Race Peace (Mississippi)
Race Peace is a multi-year residency and multi-disciplinary performance project focusing on race and how it affects our interpersonal relationships and impacts our interaction with the world around us. During the Mississippi phase, M.U.G.A.B.E.E. will partner with a local community organization in the Mississippi Delta (Itta Bena and Glendora) and Central Mississippi (Jackson) to conduct workshops that will include story circles, personal interviews, and creative development workshops. Race Peace aims to confront the difficult questions about racism, through dialogue, interviews, workshops, story sharing, digital storytelling, performance creation and curriculum building in partnership with communities that are significantly affected by racism.

Patrick Oliver (Little Rock, AR) -
Reading and Writing for Success Training Workshops
The Reading and Writing for Success Training Workshops will be implemented in an effort to increase readership among children and teens in the state of Arkansas. The Reading and Writing for Success Program takes on the philosophy of sit-ins and teach-ins whereby average citizens take action to promote political, social, or economic change. Individuals and community organizations will be trained to develop after-school and Saturday literary arts projects. The projects will include activities such as book discussions, creative writing sessions, visits to local libraries, field trips to cultural centers, attendance at literary events, hosting poetry readings, rap sessions on popular culture, community forums and youth interaction with caring adults.

People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER) (Austin, TX) - Young Scholars for Justice: Understanding the Environment through Culture and Arts
PODER's Young Scholars for Justice (YSJ) program engages youth in social and political involvement in community issues. Through the "Understanding the Environment through Culture and Arts" project, YSJ go through poetry, painting, theater, power point, and video creation and/or editing workshops. YSJ not only learn about the history of environmental racism in East Austin, they also go out into the community conducting surveys on a particular issue, hold protests, press conferences, and document their experiences and expressions through art. At the end of the summer program, the YSJ hold a community meeting to present their work.

Voices in the Treetops (Paula Larke) (Stone Mountain, GA) -
Stone Mountain Peace Tree Suite
Since moving to Stone Mountain over eight months ago, Paula Larke has been volunteering and promoting a pro-active, preventive approach to the growing tensions between African American and African Immigrant Americans. In Stone Mountain and Clarkston, GA there are Somali, Rwandan, Burundi, Ugandan, Sierra Leonean, Burmese, Colombian, Vietnamese, Congolese, Tanzanian, Bosnian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees with legal citizenship due to their political asylum status. According to Paula, "We as a community are writing and performing a peace anthem reflecting all our cultures, and I want to take children from every country we have here in DeKalb County to the microphone with me to sing it." The music and lyrics for "Peace Tree Suite" are being created from the words and thoughts of youth and adults who need an end to violence in their homes, relationships, and community. The city infrastructure must attend to the mounting tensions between cultures, and this song will call for compassion and action in multiple languages.

Any person or non-profit group/organization that uses arts, culture and community activism to organize for social, economic and political justice to the benefit of African American communities may apply. Requests are accepted from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The next deadline is June 1, 2009.

For more information about We Shall Overcome Fund, click here. To download an application form, click here (PDF - 28KB).

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