Students from Charleston, MS receiving backpacks before the start of the 2021 school year.
Here are four of our 2021 technology award recipients with Jonathan Hill (Board President) and Jack Fredericks (Director).
Students from Charleston, MS receiving backpacks before the start of the 2021 school year.
75% of children qualify for free or reduced lunch in Mississippi.
Approximately 70% of residents in the Mississippi Delta live without access to reliable broadband Internet.
Why the Delta?
Best known as the birthplace of the blues and the most fertile farmland in the country, the Mississippi Delta is home to the largest concentration of African-Americans in the state of Mississippi. Every county in the Mississippi Delta reports that anywhere from 50% to 75% of its total population is African-American. Over 50% of the families who live below the poverty line in Mississippi are African-American. Unemployment rates in the region for African-Americans range from 15% to as high as 25%. That is compared to unemployment rates for white families, which average about 5% in the region. MDEEP believes that these statistics demonstrate the high need for assistance for the state's most disenfranchised communities in the Mississippi Delta.
African-American students are half as likely to attend an A-Rated School District as white students in Mississippi.
How We Help
Here at MDEEP, we believe the best way to affect real change in an historically underserved region is through meaningful and direct projects that strategically address specific needs. Our organization's primary focus is providing updated resources and materials to students, faculty, and staff. Students in the Mississippi Delta are often forced to work with old textbooks, scarce access to technology, and outdated classroom materials. This has a direct impact on their ability to keep up with their peers across the state.
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In order to address these problems, MDEEP works primarily in two ways. The first is through our annual technology award given to many deserving seniors at qualifying schools who plan to go to college. This award comes in the form a technology package worth over $700, so that students can have access to a personal laptop, printer, paper, and toner when they first arrive to school in the fall. The second way we address these issues is through our backpack drive . The backpack drive seeks to partner with teachers, faculty, administrators and communities in the Mississippi Delta to provide backpacks and school supplies to students before the start of every school year. In 2021, MDEEP distributed 300 backpacks filled with school supplies to over six communities in the Delta.
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Thank you for being a part of the MDEEP. If you would like to donate, you can click here or navigate to the donate button below.
