A 2017 report found that when asked why they had not registered to vote, more than 60 percent of eligible voting-age adults responded that they had simply never been offered the chance to register. And more than one-third of those not registered intended to, but had not gotten around to it or found the process inconvenient. According to “Who Votes?

Congressional Elections and the American Electorate: 1978–2014”, only 15.9% of 18-24 year-olds reporting voting in 2014.  Of those with 9th to 12th grade education with no diploma,  23.2% reported they were registered and 8.7% reported that they voted. Of the general population of the state of Mississippi, 76% were registered and 42% voted.  Of the total population of Mississippi’s 18-24 year olds, 39% reported that they voted.

Opportunity youth from the state’s YouthBuild programs and elsewhere will be offered paid training and leadership opportunities with the Project. Working with project partners during the grant period, the Project will consult with an array of sources to conduct a scan of various analyses of voter participation in the recent local and presidential elections in the Mississippi Delta.

The goal will be to determine where project components could be deployed for the greatest impact on registration and voting in the presidential election in 2020 and (for later consideration) in local elections in 2021 for opportunity youth.

The Project will focus on engaging opportunity youth in three areas: voter registration, voter participation, and subsequent year-round policy engagement on specific policies of their choosing. An Intergenerational focus of the forthcoming Project will ensure that the impact extends beyond opportunity youth to include their families, neighbors, and those with shared policy interests.

As soon as funding has been committed, we will immediately put the support to use. During the initial months, will conduct urgent, intensive, and robust planning sessions with current partners and expand to recruit new collaborators throughout the Delta.

The focus will be 2020 voter engagement and will include policy advocacy as a means of building sustained interest. Within ninety to 100 days, we will generate specific preliminary geographic, demographic, and numeric goals for our voter engagement Project.

PLACES AND ORGANIZATIONS WITH OPPORTUNITY YOUTH LEADERS WHO ENGAGE VOTERS

• Greenville
  Delta Foundation
• Gulfport
  CLIMB Community Development Corporation
• Jackson
  West Jackson Community Development Corporation
• Natchez
  City of Natchez Housing Authority YouthBuild
• Yazoo City
  Gateway CDC Yazoo County YouthBuild

Spencer Nash was a community organizer engaged in the voting rights struggles of Mississippi when he and others were among the 14 civil rights and community organizations that founded Delta Foundation in 1969.

Beginning then, Mr. Nash served on the board until assuming leadership of the foundation in 2010 as President.  On the belief that the principal vehicle for the attack on poverty is the creation of for-profit enterprises that increase control and ownership of resources by the poor, Delta Foundation was chartered to benefit the economically disadvantaged residents of the Mississippi Delta many of whom were one generation from sharecropping and two generations from American slavery.

The proposed new host of the Greenville CAT, Delta Foundation, Inc. is a tax-exempt 501(C)(3) determined not to be a private foundation, as defined under Section 509 of the Internal Revenue Code.  Delta Foundation owns and operates a non-commercial Community Radio Station, the motto of which is to “Empower Through Education and Information.” In recent years, Delta Foundation has partnered with the Western Line School District providing summer and after school enrichment activities funded by a $700,000 grant from the Mississippi Department of Education.

Jeffrey Thomas was born in Mississippi in 1963 to parents who put their lives at risk in the struggle to vote.  While serving on YouthBuild USA founder Dorothy Stoneman’s team, Jeffrey led national advocacy efforts that engaged programs in local policy advocacy with their state and federal representatives and the attorneys general of six states. He supported the advocacy efforts of state-wide coalitions in New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Louisiana, and California in their efforts with state attorneys general or local legislatures.  In 2019, Jeffrey launched a $1.1 million federally funded YouthBuild program in the Mississippi Delta.

Jeffrey has a track record in deep community collaboration that centers people who live in economic poverty and that results in the creation of concepts that lead to durable projects that achieve impact in low-income communities of color.

Nikki Landrum is the Statewide Youth Organizer for the MS Delta Voter Engagement Project. She and Jeffrey previously worked together launching a $1.1 million federal YouthBuild grant in the Mississippi Delta.

Mayor Errick D. Simmons recently announced that Nikki has rejoined the City of Greenville family as Executive Assistant to the Mayor and Public Relations Director. Nikki previously worked under Mayor John Cox as Action Line Clerk and later Interim Executive Assistant. She was very instrumental in organizing and creating programs under Mayor Cox and Mayor Simmons, including the Mayor's Youth Council Black History Program. She also served as Program Coordinator with Mayor Simmons in 2016, where she led a number of initiatives, programs, and activities.

Nikki is a graduate of Greenville-Weston High School and the University of Southern Mississippi. She was a Go-Greenville intern participant and graduate of Washington County Leadership Class of 2016. She then became the Go-Greenville Internship Program Coordinator, Nikki previously served at Families First for MS. She founded the non-profit MyPreemieandME after having a premature daughter. She is and always has been actively engaged in serving the community.

Carol Blackmon is the Mississippi Coordinator for Black Voters Matter Fund, a nonprofit whose goal is to increase power in our communities through effective voting that allows a community to determine its own destiny.

She is a Senior Consultant and Human Rights Coordinator for Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice where she trains community leaders and their commissions on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2017, Ms. Blackmon led a delegation of 30 rural black women to the United States Human Rights Network Conference to provide testimony related to Extreme poverty in the United States to the United Nations Special Rapporteur for his 2018 report. As Managing Consultant for the Deep South Delta Consortium, she successfully managed the submission of a non-commercial educational radio application to the Federal Communications Commission.