L.O.V.E. 2

At the end of the school year in 2016, a single-mother approached one of the board members of EBG sharing a disheartening story about her son. He was clearly a bright student who excelled in all his course work except for reading, and literacy where he was failing. The school recommended keeping him back a year and she felt this was not a good option, but didn’t know what to do to get his reading up to grade level. This concerned mother’s story brought an awareness to the need for tutoring and mentoring of the children in the community that went beyond the capacity of the local school district. This was the beginning of a weekly summer program to enhance the outcomes of a few children. The tutoring proved successful; so successful that a full-blown after school tutoring program, Empowered by Literacy, began in the fall of that year. This small pilot program began tutoring kids who struggled with reading and soon also began to include remedial math and other subjects. This program has subsequently been folded into a larger effort by EBG called L.O.V.E. 2.  

Upon further investigation, we discovered this mother’s experience was not an isolated incident. It was, in fact, consistent with a report generated by the Mississippi Department of Education in 2016 which shared that the majority of Mississippi K-12 students “do not attain the higher levels of literacy skills that have been identified as being critical to both educational success and upward economic mobility.” With illiteracy in the state of Mississippi among the highest in the country, the challenge of assisting children in literacy and reading is a critical one to EBG.  Often, children need additional one-on-one attention beyond the capacity of what their school can provide to be academically and socially successful. 

The program has since expanded to include college preparedness workshops as well as assistance with the completion of FASFA documents and with identifying academic scholarships. EBG has also begun awarding academic scholarships and providing school supplies for those in K-12 schools.