Operation Shoestring will be adding seventh graders back into their summer programming this year.
Operation Shoestring does a number of things, including providing afterschool care and summer camp programming for the youth in inner city Jackson. The summer camp will start on June 5th and continue for six weeks. While the summer camp had previously included middle schoolers, it has not for the last several years due to covid.
“During covid, we had to pivot a lot of things,” Project Rise Coordinator Lakesha Partee said. “Since covid, we have been rebuilding. Last summer, we added students who were going into sixth grade and this year, we are pushing it to students going into seventh grade.”
Partee said they also hope to start their middle school afterschool programming once again this fall.
“We're just slowly rebuilding since we've been in the clear to get back to normal,” Partee said. “Not only that, we've had a lot of parents voice their high demand to continue on with middle school programming. That's also another huge reason why we're making sure that we provide the service.”
Partee’s goal with the summer camp is to make sure their approach is holistic and caters to the whole child. They also do programming with parents and guardians to ensure the camp is centered around the family and community. This year, they will also have a heavy focus on STEM projects.
“We will be working with Alcorn University, who will be providing coding activities for our students, as well as a new partnership with CSforALL who has a computer science curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade students,” Partee said. “We will also be working with Jackson State University professor Dr. Barnett who will work with students on building rockets and painting them.”
The goal is to ensure students don’t lose anything academically over the summer through various reading and math activities.
As part of the camp’s holistic approach, Operation Shoestring partners with St. Dominic’s to do free health screenings for the children and Mr. B Smiles Orthodontics to do dental screenings. They also partner with different organizations, such as Mississippi Families for Kids, to focus on social emotional learning.
“We value education,” Partee said. “We try to encourage children to understand and know the importance of education, and then also to just show them the different benefits of education as well. We try to do a lot of hands-on activities with our students, so they can understand why they need to learn or understand reading comprehension, have math skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, and all of those things.”
Partee said this continues to be important when these students get to be middle school aged.
“It gives our middle schoolers an opportunity to not be idle,” Partee said. “A lot of times, they think because they're older, they're safer and they don't need anyone to supervise them. But regardless of the age, it goes beyond more than just supervision. You still need to be constructive. I think, at the afterschool and summer camp program, it does provide the construction that they need in their life regardless of their age.”
For those looking to get involved with Operation Shoestring, visit their website at https://operationshoestring.org.
