Help our youths

Editor, The Commercial:

I’m here to share with you what Giving Tuesday means to me. Giving Tuesday is an extension of “community,” sharing wherever the need is greatest, and working to ensure that no one is left behind.

I learned the power of giving many years ago down on Varner Road in Lincoln County, Ark. I watched my mom, each year, mail two dollars to a small college in southeast Arkansas as her way to give back and make a difference in some young person’s life.

I watched my father, a cotton sharecropper, spend the few free hours when he wasn’t in his cotton fields, serve as a volunteer driver for the old women who had neither a car, nor a family member to take them shopping, to church, or to visit family in another town.

I grew up believing that part of our success as human beings is in how we serve, and that our service should not be dependent on what we have. What we do every day for others dictates our role as community servants.

Celebrate! Maya Project strives each day to be a community servant to the children of Arkansas, partnering with their villages who do their very best to nurture them and prepare them for a successful future. We are a small nonprofit whose service began in 2014 by celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Maya Angelou.

We have created programming and forums to continue to celebrate her life and to impact the lives of youth through arts, literacy, writing, poetry and history projects.

Please consider giving toward our programming initiatives or our annual Maya Scholarship fund. And this year, there is a second way you can help.

Celebrate! Maya Project is creating our own work space and headquarters. We are raising funds for our Maya House Renovation Project, to renovate a 100-year old home in the historic Little Rock Central High School district.

The Maya House will allow us to expand our programming for Arkansas youth, memorialize Dr. Angelou’s global legacy, and create cross-generational public events to help strengthen the village so important to our children’s future.

For more details, please visit us at www.celebratemayaproject.org, or contact me at janis@celebratemayaproject.org.