2007 Education Summers Youth Leadership Initiative

About this grant

This grant renews support to the Southern Education Foundation for its 2007 Education Summers Youth Leadership Initiative. This six-week internship program provides a multiracial, multiethnic group of talented students enrolled in southern colleges and universities with valuable experiences in the fields of education, workforce preparedness, and economic growth. Mott’s funding focuses on placement of interns in southern foundations engaged in cutting-edge work to improve education for low-income students. The goal is to expose interns to nonprofit organizations involved in educational reform as well as career opportunities in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector. Last year, 15 students participated, and in 2007, beginning teachers will be eligible for internships in addition to junior and senior college students and graduate students. Also, the Southern Education Foundation will expand the program by collaborating with Our Education, a student-run and student-oriented national effort devoted to awakening students to the need for their activism in order to ensure access to more and better education; and Teach for America, a national corps of outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity.