After 50 years, Multi-County Community Service Agency still growing

Dec. 09--After Ronald Collier described ways in which Multi-County Community Service Agency has served the community for more than 50 years, he noted how it needs to push into new territory.

"We are trying to create a new model for Multi-County," he said. "We can no longer just pay people's rent and utilities. We have to also be able to help individuals create a vision for themselves and then let us help them make the vision attainable."

When the agency was formed in 1967, it was called the Lauderdale Economic Assistance Program. The name change later reflected the expansion of services to surrounding counties.

Collier mentioned a Pathways to Graduation program and other efforts to try to help people prepare for professions. He also said that he's exploring ways to help people emerging from incarceration to prepare to re-enter the community -- and to explore ways of doing that, he's been working with Roshel Claxton-Bullie, president and CEO of Fountain of Knowledge, in Jackson, and Sherri Jones, outreach coordinator for Fountain of Knowledge.

"We're learning their model," Collier said, "so we can begin looking at young men and women who may have had some problems in the criminal justice system. We want to teach them how to go out and write a resume, apply for jobs, how to dress on the job site, (how to achieve) punctuality."

It's work that Multi-County Community Service Agency has already been doing, Collier said, but now the agency is strengthening its efforts.

"We are formalizing something that we're already doing," he said.

Collier first made a connection with Jones when Jones heard a presentation Collier was giving about re-entry into society after incarceration. That meeting sparked later communication with Claxton-Bullie, with Fountain of Knowledge.

Claxton-Bullie said Fountain of Knowledge uses "educational advancement, workforce development and entrepreneurship" to help people move ahead.

"Our primary purpose is, first of all, to change the perception of the community to the point where, when these people exit custody, they're willing to give them a chance," she said. "If they don't, then what ends up happening is that they get frustrated. They come out in a state of hopelessness, and if that hopelessness doesn't change, they recidivate back into the system."

Claxton-Bullie also mentioned reaching out to companies that would consider hiring people who had emerged from incarceration.

"Once they come to our workforce development training, then they hire them as employees," she said.

Claxton-Bullie has experience in helping people who have been incarcerated return to society. She said she'd served as principal of the Youthful Offenders Unit of the Mississippi Department of Corrections in Central Mississippi. In that position, she helped young people to re-enter the community.

"I usually followed them into the community," she said, "not necessarily to help them find a job, because many times they weren't old enough, but to help them get back into school. So when I left the Department of Corrections my focus broadened a little bit to adults, as well as juveniles.

Jones said he's doing "most of the relationship-building between Fountain of Knowledge and the employers."

"A lot of the work that we do is removing the preliminary issues that people have when they hire people -- about being tardy, about being professional, just basic stuff ... to get them ready," he said.

He said two federal judges support the program.

"This issue is an issue where everybody has to come to the table as a stakeholder," Jones said.

Jones described some of the collaborative work he's doing with Multi-County Community Service Agency.

"We're trying to introduce Multi-County to the work that we're doing in Jackson and to support Multi-County to integrate that into the work that they're doing," he said. "And also, Multi-County has been such a blessing to the work that we're doing, with the knowledge that Mr. Collier has."

Claxton-Bullie emphasized the importance of broad community involvement in such efforts.

"Every aspect of the community," she said, "has to have a hand in it."

And Collier noted that more volunteers to assist the Multi-County Community Service Agency would be welcome.

People interested in volunteering, or who seek more information, may call 601-483-4838. The address for the agency is 2900 St. Paul St., in Meridian.

On the Net:

http://multicountycsa.org/

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