Georgia On My Mind

By Eric Stradford and Stephanie Walker Stradford

AMWS, January 8, 2008, Kennesaw, GA – Ma’ranna celebrated her 83^rd birthday today with a Georgia homecoming. Her parents, J.D. and Laurena Puriefoy Walker fled the segregated south, their rural Spalding County community, and their 8^th Street Baptist Church home in 1926. Ma’ranna’s maternal grandparents, Charles and Mary Puriefoy left the farm where they had lived since the turn of the 20^th Century with all they could carry, including nine Puriefoy offspring and grandchildren.

The Walkers planted themselves in Philadelphia’s Elmwood Community as did many others fleeing threats of homegrown terror. Ma’ranna, her brothers, sister, cousins and extended church family grew up in and around historic Beulah Baptist Church, where J.D. Walker served as chair of the Deacon board. Over time, family members talked less and less about going back, as though silence would soften the stony road they had endured. But, like an old sweet song, unspeakable pains of the past could not erase the Georgia on their minds.

Legendary performer, Ray Charles perhaps captured the spirit of systemic disenfranchisement in the soul-stirring ballad, “Georgia on My Mind." Stuart Gorrell wrote the words, Hoagy Carmichael scored the music, and, on April 24, 1979, the state legislature made it Georgia's official state song. But families like the Walkers and Puriefoys perpetuate the spirit and closely-guarded subliminal message now etched in the state’s corporate consciousness. On March 7, 1979, it stood as a testimony to unspeakable memories before a joint meeting of the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives.

Melodies bring memories
That linger in my heart
Make me think of Georgia
Why did we ever part?
Some sweet day when blossoms fall
And all the world's a song
I'll go back to Georgia
'Cause that's where I belong.

Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
Georgia, Georgia, a song of you
Comes as sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines.

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you.

Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.

Ma’ranna was the last member of her family to live in Georgia. Her daughter, Stephanie came back two years ago to promote bipartisan faith and community initiatives on behalf of at-risk youth. “When I look back on my childhood, I can reflect on the value of a good Christian home. My mom was an extremely resourceful single parent who did what she had to do to,” said Stephanie A. Walker Stradford. “It took a whole village to raise a child. My whole village included grands, great-grands, aunts, uncles, cousins, an extended Beulah Baptist Church family, and an underground railway of caring folks from Georgia al the way to Queens, NY.
By the time Stephanie graduated from Philadelphia High School for Girls, her foundation had already been seeded with a perpetual endowment from her grandparents. Any youth age 7-24 can benefit through scholarships, fellowships or economic empowerment through THE ANNUAL YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS.

The Georgia chapter of the historic Southern Christian Leadership Conference has been reviewing holistic youth development strategies to engage Georgia church members in a SHARED VISION FOR YOUTH. Youth Achievers USA Institute (YouthUSA) initiated a regional strategy to build local faith and community capacity around state planning in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

YouthUSA establishes a seat at the planning table for historically disadvantaged and at-risk Americans. Access to timely and meaningful information is essential to any effort to shape public policy or address public concerns, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Over the years, government agencies have amassed vast stores of information about communities, but often this information has not been available in a form that communities can readily use.

Asset mapping technologies now being used by federal agencies vastly increase the ability of communities to gather and interpret information in government databases. As a result, communities today are, theoretically, in a better position to use information to answer local questions and serve local needs. Until federal, state and local planners can connect assets to the whole person, the at-risk cycle perpetuates.

In 2003, the White House Task Force Report on Disadvantaged Youth noted that despite billions of public and private dollars spent on services to youth, many of the neediest youth are still being left behind. The report cited a lack of communication, coordination, and collaboration among federal agencies that provide services.

Federal agencies, including the Corporation for National Service, were charged with developing more effective interagency collaborations to better serve targeted youth populations. The outcome is “Shared Youth Vision” advance technical assistance at the state level that engages practitioners in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi in planning on behalf of at-risk youth in their respective states.

Issues presented in the White House Report confirmed problems so broad in scope that in 1997 the living Presidents of The United States collectively addressed them with five fundamental “promises” for “America’s Future.” The Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future asserted that every youth needed a one-to-one caring adult mentor, safe places to learn and grow, marketable skills through effective education, an opportunity to give back through meaningful community service, and a healthy start. These fundamentals represent unrealized outcomes when any one child is left behind. The child that has been historically left behind is a case where, “the needs of the one can outweigh the needs of the many. ”

Engaging the “whole village” means identifying substantive roles for seniors, baby boomers, church congregations, and other underutilized populations. Experiences of ex-offenders, though often unreported, can help to alter generational behavior in historically disadvantaged households where at-risk youth are most likely to live. More than 600,000 adults are released from state and federal prisons every year, while an estimated 100,000 juveniles and youth offenders are released from secure and residential detention facilities.

The return of ex-offenders can be viewed as a potential liability or harnessed as an asset for meeting needs in this region. As vast numbers of incarcerated youth and adults head home, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Region’s economy, hit with the force of high-impact storms, is strapping in for a less obvious, but equally potent long term effects of a drought.

The Governor of Georgia called on citizens to join in prayer, as a natural disaster slowly unfolds to reveal yet another need for community asset accumulation. Water is one of nature’s key resources for sustaining life. Historically, in times of severe drought, it has represented both an economic and an environmental asset. This asset is accumulated through rainfall, watershed, measured use (restrictions), or conservation. It connects everything to everything else in the environment and the economy -- watersheds, industry and agriculture, residential development, landscaping, pavement run-off, roof and building materials, energy use, transportation, tourism and recreational facilities.

Water impacts a region’s livelihood in both business and in homes. In the 16-county Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, approximately 652 million gallons a day (MGD) are used each day. The majority of this water is from surface water sources, the most important being the Chattahoochee River/ Lake Lanier and the Etowah River/Lake Allatoona which provide 84% of the regional total water supply. Unlike other metropolitan areas, The City of Atlanta, hub for the Atlanta region, is not located on a major body of water. Though the Atlanta Region averages just over 50 inches of rainfall each year, its rivers and streams are relatively small. Unfortunately, a grant from the Corporation for National Service will not address the drought problem—rain will. But increased communication and information asset sharing across state lines will help neighbors in the region better respond to each other’s diverse and common needs.

The YouthUSA approach to environmental stewardship considers two common denominators— bringing more people up to speed on priority issues with self-paced learning and valuing the time invested by each person’s time. In organizing service days and other events in the community to increase citizen engagement, YouthUSA will build relationships with federal grantees identified through asset mapping to augment funded training and technical assistance events with Internet-accessible, on-demand training modules.

The YouthUSA approach to economic stewardship has established an alliance with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to provide Money-Smart financial literacy modules in low to moderate income communities. AmeriCorps members will undergo on-line, self paced financial literacy courses as part of their service obligation. They will qualify as trainers to train other participants in the financial literacy curriculum.

As a registered Helping America’s Youth partner, YouthUSA accesses HAYGIS asset mapping tools to support any local Whole Village, anywhere in the United States. This local information asset provides a prospective local AmeriCorps member with easily accessible data for sharing with participating Whole Villages. The local organization (3 or more Whole Villages) can now leverage participation of other community stakeholders in voluntary activities such as conducting outreach and securing resources in support of service activities that meet specific needs in the community. Outreach to justice departments in the target states identifies additional channels for facilitating ex-offender participation along with other community assets.

Youth Achievers USA Institute is a 501( c) (3) public charity, legally established September 11, 2006. However THE ANNUAL YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS capacity-building program has been developed over 11 years, and supported through the voluntary efforts of social entrepreneurs. The scope of our operation is mobile deployment from tele-work centers staffed by seniors supported by computer-literate social entrepreneurs.