“When one builds people, a good community will emerge,” wrote Mississippi-born author Clifton Taulbert in his wistful book “Eight Habits of the Heart.”
Good soul Bernard “Joe” Hulin is building people in rural, distressed Kemper County.
Since 2009, Joe has led Parents and Community Equals Educational Success, or PACES for short. The program is an all-volunteer, community-based project that mentors Kemper County youth and provides them skills and knowledge they need to succeed in school and life. Data shows the ACT scores for seniors have increased yearly and the college-going rate has risen from less than 50% to 78%.
The Mississippi Higher Education Initiative has cited PACES, a partnership between the Kemper County Economic Development Authority and Kemper County High School, as “one of the most productive community-school partnerships in North Mississippi.”
Joe says this work all started one June in 2002. Having returned home to Preston, MS, after a 24-year Navy career, he was serving as a high school teacher. He and other teachers attended a 7 Habits of Highly Effective People training seminar facilitated by The Montgomery Institute in Meridian.
“Little did I realize how significant an impact the training session would have on my personal and professional lives,” he said. “My life, or at bare minimum the manner in which I make decisions that affect my life, has indeed changed….I now experience a more intense feeling of an inner peace as a result of helping others.”
Indeed, Joe was about to become a “servant leader.”
“The servant leader is servant first,” said Robert K. Greenleaf, founder of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. “It begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first, as opposed to wanting power, influence, fame, or wealth.”
With help from his wife Loretta, Joe said he “helped establish a Sunday school and set up a lending library for the children. Additionally, we acquired needed children’s clothing for children that were members of the Sunday school and began mentoring the children. As time passed the children began to attain a greater spiritual awareness and became more academically focused.”
From this work grew the concept for PACES.
So, how did Joe become such a good soul?
“I do believe that my ‘upbringing’ was a primary factor in what I chose to do in life and how I would go about getting there.”
“The aspects of my upbringing that remain in the forefront of my mind are: striving to always give any undertaking our best effort; being a God loving family and sharing our blessings; and my father’s unrelenting courage to demand his just due.”
“I realize now that my parent's stories … fed my aspirations to achieve what some regarded as unrealistic goals for a little black kid during greatly challenging times of segregation and oppression in America (1953-1965).”
“Today and throughout the entire process, I have always felt that I am indeed blessed and I have been granted much more than I have given of myself.”
We need more volunteers committed to building people like Joe Hulin.
“Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land” – Deuteronomy 15:11.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.
1 comment:
Sounds like a fantastic program that is making a difference. We need more men and women like Joe.
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