Statements

Mission

Nashville Freedom School Partnership uses liter acy to instill cultural pride, self-assurance, and active citizenship with a primary focus on children and youth of color.

Background

Nashville Freedom School Partnership was created in 2014 as a local expression of Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools. Freedom Schools were created 1994 by the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., as part of that organization's mission to advocate for poor children,particularly children of color?who often drop through the cracks of public school and social service systems. CDF research (now confirmed by national studies by political, sociological, and education organizations) show that low-income Black and Latino American children in are more likely than their White and middle-income classmates to have low reading scores and behavioral challenges in school and lack of auxiliary learning resources, such as summer enrichment and summer-time reading and social engagement. With lack of education and the options that strong education and other support systems provide, Black and Latino boys, especially, are more likely to get into trouble in school, to drop out of school, engage in unhealthy behaviors, and, in many cases, to end of in the criminal justice system. CDF Freedom Schools, which operate in more than 120 U.S. cities and town and serve more than 14,000 children annually, offer a summertime literacy and enrichment program to stem summer learning loss that affects all children. The program further uses specially selected books in an Integrated Reading Curriculum that celebrates the cultures and contributions of people of color and young people. In this way, scholars in Freedom School read books with characters that ring true for them. The see themselves as positive agents of change, decision makers, heroes and meaningful contributors to their communities. This curriculum is taught by college and graduate students, ages 19-29, who demonstrate both an aptitude and a passion for reaching children and a of marginalized populations. The program is rounded out by community partners and volunteers. The program is named for Freedom Schools developed in Mississippi during Freedom Summer 1964 in the Civil Rights Era. The Nashville Freedom School Partnership is a 501(c)3 nonprofit agency, organized in December 2014 to promote, plant, seek funding and sustainability, and provide CDF Freedom Schools? in the Metro Nashville area, in partnership with public schools, faith-based and other community partners. Freedom Schools generally operate annually for six weeks, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.

Impact

We are breaking the cycle of youth violence, rage, and poor academic performance?and, thus, keeping children out of the criminal justice system and sending them on to higher education?via a year-round system of arts engagement, workshops and training with law-enforcement and Metro Nashville education and government officials, and partnerships with local faith-based organizations invested in changing social systems for the better for at-risk, poor children of color and their families. Nashville Freedom Schools has increased doubled the number of children and youth served from 97 in 2014 to 140 in 2018. More than 85% of the scholars in our summer literacy improved in vocabulary and fluency in our six-week session in 2018. In addition to specific literacy programs for children in K-8, we also provide job training, mentoring, and a $1,000 stipend for 10 teens in grades 10-11, who worked as Junior Interns. These are low-income youth of color who have aged out of our basic program, but who are recruited and trained as classroom helpers and assistants to our summer teachers.Our Parent Empowerment have seen 40 parents and guardians engaged in volunteering, donating to and support Freedom School after school hours.More than 35 college and graduate students, ages 30 and under, have been trained to mentor and teach literacy skills to some of the most at-risk families in Nashville.We currently have more than 15 corporate, governmental, civil and faith-based partner organizations, which provide books, interns, two meals a day, field trips and other enrichment activities, and mentoring for the scholars in our program.

Needs

Financial support to expand the program and provide an infrastructure to insure continued growth and effectiveness. (The current cost to operate one six-week program for 50 children per summer is about $1,300 per child, or $70,000 total; for 100 children, the cost is about $120,000 per summer. To engage a full-time director and basic staff?reading assessment, technical, and office support?for a full year would require about $300,000 to start.)Corporate and private supporters willing to provide volunteer time, sponsor field trips, celebrations, and fund offer enrichment activities for scholars, such as art, music, STEM, drama and organized sports/physical education, and experiences to reinforce hope and skill-building in nonviolent conflict transformation and participation in positive social action. Potential board members with strong skills in fundraising, who are willing to give to and help plan and sponsor fund-raising events for the Nashville Freedom School Partnership.Professional family counseling available in-kind for at-risk families served by our program. (Our long-term goal is to employ a family counselor at each of our sites, and to provide follow-up, check-in support and programming for our families throughout the year.)

CEO Statement

Every child is a gift to this planet, and we cannot afford to lose even one child to violence, despair, racial injustice, hopelessness, poverty or jail.Our primary work and our reason for being is to break the cycle of poor academic performance and getting into trouble in school-youth violence and criminal behavior-imprisonment that affects Black and Brown children of poverty. The work of Freedom Schools/CDF is not just "summer fun." Rather, we are working year-round with Juvenile Court, the Mayor's Task Force on Youth Violence, law-enforcement officials and Metro Public Schools to change the systems that work against at-risk youth. We currently operate a school-year project with Pearl-Cohn High School that connects youth artists with working adult artists (some of whom are ex-offenders), in which the youth are encouraged to tell their own stories through art. The youth are trained as ambassadors of non-violent conflict resolution who work with their peers and with members of Metro Nashville police officers to create dialogue about how to improve community-police relations. Our CDF Nashville leadership team of seven (7) people is engaged daily in training for police officers, training public school educators in restorative justice and win-win methods for meting out discipline and helping youth deal with conflict, workshops for college students and seminary students led by ex-offenders who explain first-hand what support systems?social services, public education, religious, legal?can and must do to address racism, poverty, mistrust of law enforcement, despair, and mutual indifference, so that the world is better for young people who are at risk.

Board Chair Statement

Since 2014, the Nashville Freedom School Partnership has doubled the number of children we serve?from 97 in 2014 to 140 in 2018, and those scholars who stay with Freedom Schools for two summers or more, improve their sight-word fluency by 50 percent. Freedom Schools are strategically located in some of the poorest, most under-served communities in urban Nashville. Children who attend our program have become more confident and proficient at reading and comprehending what they read. They have developed better problem-solving skills and the ability to solve conflict without violence. And they have a more positive understanding of the gifts they have to offer their community and world. We stand with children in crisis. In summer 2015, a 9-year-old Freedom School scholar saw her mother arrested during the first week of our session. Her grandmother reached out to our staff and the staff offered support and understanding. The child blossomed under that support, writing letters about and sending pictures of her taken by Freedom School staff to her mom during her incarceration. At the end of the summer, her grandmother told me, 'You gave her something positive to hope for and a loving place to be.' Another child, who has sickle-cell anemia and behavior problems in school has been with Nashville Freedom Schools since we opened in summer 2014. Shortly before our 2016 session opened, he had heart surgery, but insisted upon coming to Freedom School for one day during his recovery. Now a 7th grader, he still has some behavior issues, but he has also become our resident expert on African-American history, and is often cited as a leader in our classes on history and heritage. Last summer, he recited a piece by Langston Hughes, and his mom told staff, 'You have made him confident about himself.' I believe in the power of public schools to bring out greatness in children. At the same time, I believe that community leaders must invest in public schools and provide advocacy and augmented programming to do what many schools cannot or will not: affirm, uplift, adequately fund and champion children of color and children in poverty so that they have a chance to overcome the systemic adversity that keeps them from succeeding. It is not enough to say, 'There are no throw-away children.' Rather, our public school and city budgets, the volunteerism of corporate and other agencies, and the political systems of our cities, counties and nation must reflect our commitment to those who are most vulnerable in our society. Freedom Schools make children of color from low-income families our top priority, and that is making a positive difference in how those children thrive. From the college interns we hire (many of whom are from backgrounds similar to those of our scholars) to the families we engage and recruit, Nashville Freedom Schools are making tangible the value we must ascribe to children made vulnerable by our socio-economic systems. Because we believe that EVERY child is born excellent?and we will never give up on our children. M. Garlinda Burton, presidentNashville Freedom School Partnership

Service Categories
Primary Category:	Education  - Remedial Reading & Encouragement
Secondary Category:	Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy  - Children's Rights
Tertiary Category:	Youth Development  - Single Organization Support

Areas Served

We target low-income children and families in Metropolitan Nashville, Tennessee, specifically the lowest income, most challenged areas in our urban area. We started our work in the 37208 area code, currently one of the poorest with the largest numbers of struggling public schools, and now we also serve children in the Edgehill public housing community in 37212.

TN - Davidson