Nine high schools receive fellowships

Student leaders from 10 area high schools were awarded $3,000 fellowships from the Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities Foundation Thursday morning to implement projects they developed to create positive changes in their schools and communities during the 2016-17 school year.   

The student projects were developed after participating in MJCHF "Conversation Toward a Brighter Future" summits that took place at MJCHF earlier this year. During the summits, the students brainstormed ideas to create positive change in their schools or community around the MJCHF's core principles of respect, dignity, understanding and forgiveness.  The students were encouraged to think outside their comfort zones to consider how people must treat one another for society to thrive. 

Seeking input from their peers at their respective schools, the students identified an issue, researched it and then developed a program to create a positive change.  The requirements of the program were that it had to have measurable outcomes, the ability to be replicated by other schools and communities, and be sustainable.  

Before school representatives presented their proposals Friday morning, MJCHF Foundation Executive Director Ed Hightower kicked off the culminating summit by emphasizing that the students and their peers were the future and that “the future is very bright.”

Madison County Chairman Alan Dunstan spoke about the importance of community service and encouraged the students to consider becoming a community leader in the future to help make a better city, county, and nation.  “There's problems in our country today, and it's with a lot of the adults that are in there today,” Dunstan pointed out.  “And I think you students can teach us older people a lot of things about how to get along, compromise and work together.”

“You are the future of the world, and we need leadership,” he stressed.

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