This article originally appeared in the February 2005 Boost-A-Month Club Newsletter

Mississippi Kids and Community EXCEL

Seven of the nine Mississippi students who graduated from EXCEL’s adult education program in December 2004 celebrate their accomplishment.

When Sister Liz Brown arrived in Okolona, Miss., in 1985 as the new pastoral associate of Glenmary’s St. Theresa Church, she was excited about returning to rural ministry. Little did she know that in the coming years she would be part of a process that would bring change to the entire county.

The vehicle for this chance is called EXCEL (Enrichment in Xcellence through Community Education and Leadership), and today Sister Liz serves as its executive director as well as pastoral associate at the parish. EXCEL’s purpose is to further education, promote community building, encourage community service and foster healthy lives. And in the past almost 20 years, it’s growth has been, in Sister Liz’s words, “miraculous.”

In early 1988, volunteers from Sister Liz’s community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, offered to come to Okolona for the summer. Sister Liz talked with Sister Nancy Shreck, the pastoral associate in the Glenmary mission in neighboring Houston, and they agreed they didn’t want volunteers from out of state coming in to do “good” that the community didn’t ask for.

“Everything in the town was based on whites helping whites or blacks helping blacks,” Sister Liz says. “We needed something to bring the people together.”

Sisters Liz and Nancy, as members of the local National Council of Negro Women, asked if they were interested in co-sponsoring a project with the Catholic Church. They were very eager and the planning began.

A cross section of the community was invited to the first planning meeting: whites and blacks, poor and rich, all from various faith denominations. “During the meeting, we all kept coming back to the same issue: education,” Sister Liz says, “and the need for a summer program to help the kids stay up on their studies.”

The local elementary school donated the space and over 100 volunteers ran the five-week program for 60 kids which focused on math and reading. “We had to cut the registrations off at 60,” Sister Liz remembers.

On the heels of the summer school success, the steering committee, which has become EXCEL’s advisory board, wanted to move forward and begin an after-school program to help kids in this impoverished county: 10-12 percent unemployment; 55 percent of families with children under 18 live below the federal poverty level and 56 percent of the population has no high school education.

A friend of Sister Liz’s with a background in education needed a job for a year and was excited about the after-school program. She moved to Okolona and started off with six kids in two sessions held in two rent-free rooms.

From there, EXCEL took off and developed into successful programs for young and old alike. Here is just a sampling:

• 20 Summer Learning Camps serving over 300 kids focusing on different topics.

• An adult learning program is offered for impoverished high-school drop-outs that combines GED preparation and job preparation. “In June we graduated 10 kids, seven of whom are now in college,” Sister Liz says. “In December we graduated nine kids and, in March, we’ll graduate eight more.”

• A state-of-the-art computer lab open to the community because “lack of access to computers is yet another way poor kids can’t keep up.”

• Senior citizen programs and meals.

• A program for suspended and expelled kids, in partnership with the local public schools, where the troubled students report to EXCEL, with their books. They work on normal assignments, counseling is provided and community service work is done by the kids.

Sister Liz remembers a young woman who arrived at EXCEL after being expelled from school for carrying a knife—which she carried since being raped while visiting a relative at the city jail. She was on a self-destructive road with no stability in her life and a bad family situation.

After three months in the program, she begged not to have to return to her high school. When asked why, she said “When I’m here (at EXCEL) people respect me—at school I have to fight.”

Since then, she has graduated from high school and recently visited Sister Liz for advice on buying a house. “She learned from her mistakes and has come light years from when we first met her,” Sister Liz says.
And, EXCEL has come light years from where it began. Today, there are 12 staff members and two additional EXCEL sites in Mississippi—all of which use the EXCEL framework and apply that to their community’s needs.

A United Way agency, funded by minimal program fees, grants and private donations, EXCEL has been able to purchase two large buildings in downtown and are truly “community” centers for the area, used for everything from Boy Scout meetings (held in a local church until the Scouts were integrated and then they were asked to move) to theology classes for the deanery.

The entire Okolona community is involved with EXCEL in some way, including “Everyone at the parish—all 15 families,” Sister Liz laughs.

“This is just an example of what one small mission parish—and one small community—can do.”