 |
| Gloria Dickerson (front: third from right) and youth from Sunflower County. |
Gloria Dickerson thinks big. Not only is she bringing Three Principles training to 90 youth in Mississippi's Sunflower County through a unique series of all-day Saturday sessions, she plans to wrap up the sessions with a field trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Why Disney World? She wants the participants to experience for themselves the connections between learning and enjoyment of life. During the day in Orlando, the students will attend classes, and in the evening they will relax and enjoy themselves at the world-famous theme park that most never expected to see.
These young folks come from a background of economic hardship, where they often are told they'll never succeed in life.
“The more I work with these kids, I realize that these are bright kids. They're smart. They have some creativity within them, and they want stuff," Gloria said. "But the way they've been stereotyped in society – that the poor kids from the Delta don't want anything, they've never seen anybody go to work, so they don't know anything about that – it's not true! The more you work with them, you look in their faces, and they talk to you, you see they have dreams, they have aspirations just like any other kids. And they're smart but they haven’t had exposure. They haven't had anybody to work with them and nurture them and teach them and train them.”
Gloria tells of one boy who wants to play piano and have a career in music. But his mother told him, “You're black. You have to remember that” - a message he interprets as a limit on his hopes and dreams. These are exactly the kinds of limiting thoughts that Gloria is hoping to challenge with her program, “$$$ for Your Thoughts.”
“No matter how they treat me,
I'm still going to go to school”
 |
| Gloria Dickerson |
In the 1960s, Gloria's mother, Mae Bertha Carter, decided to break the cycle of poverty. The school district's Freedom of Choice plan supposedly allowed everyone to choose what school they wanted to go to. So Mae Bertha placed seven of her children's names on an application form to attend an all-white school. Such a thing was unheard of in Drew, where whites believed that African Americans would never dare breach the white-black divide. The white community retaliated with violence and intimidation, but her parents refused to give up. They wanted their children to have the best education possible. The family launched a successful lawsuit, with Gloria and her siblings as plaintiffs, against the Freedom of Choice plan, forcing the district to integrate the schools.
Gloria's challenge was just beginning. She was in Grade 7 when she and her siblings started attending the white school. For five years, they were the only black kids in their classes. Their classmates and their teachers subjected them to horrific cruelty, but Gloria's attitude was, “No matter how they treat me, I'm still going to go to school and learn.” She maintained perfect attendance and excellent grades.
Mae Bertha always assured her, “The better the education you get, the better your quality of life will be.”
Mae Bertha proved right. Gloria went on to earn her MBA and hold such positions as vice president and financial controller. Eventually, Gloria realized that her work, while well paid, was not fulfilling.
“I didn't feel good about the work I did,” she said. Her desire to work with people led her into the field of corporate training, but even that did not satisfy her need to contribute on a deeper level. At that time, she was working for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She asked if she could become more involved with the communities that Kellogg was helping. The answer was yes, and Gloria moved from Michigan back to Mississippi, taking on the position of program director for the Kellogg Foundation's Mid-South Delta Initiative. She was there, awarding grants and playing a pivotal role, when 15 Delta communities came together to form the Delta Citizens Alliance (DCA), dedicated to raising the quality of life for Delta residents.
DCA executive director Larry Williams invited Gloria to sit on the DCA steering committee. Gloria was getting much closer to her dream of being able to share her passionate belief in the human potential of Delta's poverty-stricken people.
“A culture of possibilities”
As she went from community to community in the Delta, she kept hearing people say the same thing: “The Delta is a place where things are not going to change until we can really get to the mindset of the people, the way people think about what's possible, the way people think about what they can do in order to make a difference. The more we can get them to be hopeful and not as hopeless, and the more we can get them to think about their expectations, and their aspirations, and their dreams, then the better off we will be."
Yet, there was no funding specifically addressing the need to raise people's awareness of their own human potential. Gloria wanted to find a way to help folks in the Delta create what she called, “a culture of possibilities.”
Gloria kept looking. One day Larry Williams invited her to a DCA conference and the agenda included a session by Ami Chen Mills-Naim of the Center for Sustainable Change (CSC). Gloria noticed that the topic had something to do with “mindset.”
“I thought, 'Oh, that's what I'm looking for.'” Gloria remembers. The next day, she spoke with her fellow program officer at Kellogg and said, “We need someone to work with people and talk to them about their thought processes and patterns, because unless we can change that, nothing else is going to change.” The program officer replied that she'd just funded a proposal from a woman in California to work with DCA on exactly that. The woman was Ami Chen Mills-Naim.
So when Gloria finally saw Ami later that night in person at the conference, she was quick to make a connection. The two happened to meet in the elevator. Ami looked at Gloria and said, “Are you a trainer?” Gloria said no. So Ami asked, “Why are you here?”
“I'm here because I'm ready to transform the Delta,” Gloria replied.
That meeting led to Gloria attending 3 Principles training sessions with Ami in the Delta, travelling to a CSC retreat in California, and attending follow-up sessions. “I wanted to be sure that whatever it is I was offering in the Delta, fit what the people needed in the Delta,” Gloria said. “I want to raise the awareness of the people in terms of the role that Thought plays in their lives. However, I want to do that in conjunction with whatever their issues are.” She struggled with the fact that most Delta residents live in poverty. They need food, shelter, clothing – the basic necessities of life.
The 3 Principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, as she understood them, are about peace of mind and acceptance of what is. At first she saw a contradiction between “accepting what is” and working to change things. But eventually she realized, “There is a difference between being at peace and accepting the status quo.”
She came to this conclusion: “I have to be at peace and accept what is. And then if I want something to be different, I can work to make it different.”
Listen as Gloria describes how she uses
the 3 Principles to help Delta youth (5 min.)
This realization helped her when it came time to found her own non-profit organization, We2gether Creating Change. And it helps her assist her own students, who struggle with negative thought patterns. She is able to teach them to be okay with what their thought patterns are, now, and to accept them, while also saying, “I can work on changing things.”
Gloria designed a series of Saturday sessions that integrate 3 Principles fundamentals with topics of compelling interest to middle school and high school students. Held in downtown Drew in space donated by the Mississippi Delta Community College, each Saturday focuses on a different theme: health, career, education, finance, relationships, etc. The 90 students attending are bright and creative, but they've received a lot of messages from external sources that make them feel trying is pointless. Many of these kids have been told that being black is an obstacle.
Gloria says, once they realize where these thoughts come from, they can start asking, “Is that really true for me?”
“We talk about the passion within”
One boy, who was behind a grade, had the thought that he'd never get out of high school. When he realized he could remove that thought and think something else, like, “I'm going to get out of high school because I want to and because I know the universal support is there,” he began to work harder. He now expects to graduate in May.
“We talk about the passion within, and the gifts that they came into the world with, and the gifts within,” Gloria said. “It's not what other people say, or other people's thoughts that dictate to you where you're going to go in life.”
To capitalize on the students' enthusiasm for the sessions, Gloria came up with the idea of a field trip to Walt Disney World during March break. During the day, the students will attend more classes on themes of practical importance to their lives, all grounded in the Principles of Universal Mind, Consciousness and Thought. And in the evenings they will head to the theme park for some fun.
Her message to them is simple: “The more you learn, the better quality of life you'll have.”
When they return from Florida, they will have a ceremony to mark their graduation from the Mae Bertha Carter Institute. But that won't necessarily mean the end for these youth. Gloria plans to invite them all to attend alumni meetings, for as long as they want. “They'll always be part of that group, and they'll be the first class to become part of that group in the Delta.”
Gloria Dickerson's work with youth, including the field trip to Walt Disney World, is funded 1/3 from her own financial resources and 2/3 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The “$$$ for your Thoughts” program is co-facilitated by Drew resident Kyree Smith. Learn more about Gloria's non-profit organization, We2gether Creating Change, by visiting http://we2gether.org/
by Maureen Latta, CSC Grants Manager
- All things are possible.
- I can and I will.
- I will discover my gifts, talents, and passions.
- I love myself first; then others.
- I will use good thoughts and good feelings to create a good life.
- I have an attitude of gratitude.
- I will use my inner power to succeed and connect to the power of the universe for help.
- My hopes and expectations for myself are UP.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment