Thirteen-year-old Marin Sherwin is an effervescent eighth grader who loves cars and wants to grow up to be a mechanical engineer. Ask her what it means to be a leader and she will rattle off seven critical habits, including “sharpening the saw,” shorthand for keeping her mind, body and soul in balance.

“All the habits have a way of changing you, have a way of making things better,” Marin explains.

Students in Vicksburg talk like this. The Vicksburg-Warren School District, with the support of residents, local businesses and the Vicksburg-Warren Chamber of Commerce, has embraced The Leader in Me initiative for all of its schools. The approach, honed by the late author and leadership guru Stephen Covey, is seen not just as a tool to help young people set goals, but a way to start changing the very fabric of the community.

“You’ve got to inspire kids to want to take what they have, form it into something exceptional, and be able to market that in such a way that they feel fulfilled with the rest of their life,” says Chad Shealy, superintendent of the Vicksburg-Warren School District.

Educators in Vicksburg are on the frontline of improving the city’s Culture of Health, promoting everything from universal pre-K for young children to better preparation of high school students for college and careers through programs like the Ford Next Generation Learning initiative.

After decades of decline, the metrics are starting to improve. In the Vicksburg-Warren School District, which has 8,500 students, high school graduation rates have increased from 56.2 percent in 2012 to 70.7 percent in 2017, an improvement but still well below the national average of 83 percent.

With The Leader in Me initiative, two of the first 16 schools that have implemented the approach saw a 49 percent decrease in discipline referrals and an 8 percent reduction in absenteeism from 2011 and 2014.

Monica Evans, a public school teacher and mother of two school-age children, says she sees the impact in her classroom. “It’s a way of explaining, ‘This is what we expect you to be now and as you grow older,’ and they catch on.”

Like the rest of the city, the school district has tried to more effectively leverage assets in the local workforce, most notably the elite U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), which has 1,800 employees in the Vicksburg area. Professionals from the center assist robotics teams from elementary through high school; host a solar car competition for students; and lead a one-week summer STEM experience, called Camp Invention, for students in grades 1 to 6.

The district also collaborates with Hinds Community College to allow students to enroll in college courses while still in high school.

And if parents are impressed by what they are seeing in schools, they, too, will be able to participate. Using federal and state funding, the district is creating a 15-month course to help out-of-work mothers and fathers of school-age children train for job opportunities. Poverty, says Shealy, is “the number one issue.”

“Schools are the center of this community,” adds Linda Fondren, an entrepreneur and founder of Shape Up Vicksburg. “If we get the schools right, so many other things...just come together, fit together.”   

On an early August morning, already a simmering 80 degrees in the shade, a couple dozen walkers assembled around Linda Fondren, founder of Shape Up Vicksburg, ready to follow her on a 2-mile power walk through the Vicksburg National Military Park. The group included more women than men, with equal numbers of African-American and white walkers.

Seeing such a mixed crowd in the park was not always the case. Fondren, an African-American and veritable Pied Piper of physical fitness known throughout the city for her efforts to get people up off the couch and on the move, recalls being asked point-blank by a former park superintendent, Michael Madell, “Why do so few African-Americans walk in the park?”

To Fondren, the reason seemed obvious: “African-Americans feel that the park glorifies the Confederacy.” And she added truthfully, “Exercise was at the bottom of a long list of priorities for most African-Americans.”

A central theme to the Vicksburg story is the city’s pooling of resources and leveraging of everything at its disposal to improve health. And yet, the largest parcel of open space—an undulating 1,700 acres with 12 miles of paths and 16 miles of roadway for biking—felt unwelcoming for the city’s majority African-American population.

A turning point in the Civil War, the 47-day siege of Vicksburg in 1863 gave Union troops control of the vital Mississippi, leaving 19,233 dead and cutting off Confederate supply routes. Just a mile from downtown, the park preserves the battle lines held by Union and Confederate soldiers.  

Fondren and park officials hashed out ideas for bridging the racial divide that the park represented. Seven years ago, they came up with a walk through the park to mark Black History Month, promoting it as “Our shared history, our shared community, our shared health.”

Rangers led a walking tour past the United States Colored Troops Monument, representing African- American soldiers who fought on both sides of the war, and the Vicksburg National Cemetery, which includes 7,000 black soldiers among the 17,000 veterans who are buried there. The rangers told the story of the Battle of Milliken’s Bend, just across the Mississippi, where African-American troops engaged in hand-to-hand combat to defeat Confederate attackers trying to seize a depot.

The reaction was “unbelievable,” Fondren says. Some participants who had spent their whole lives in Vicksburg had never seen the monument, or even knew that black soldiers were buried in the cemetery. “We want people to look at that history when they go through there as restored self-respect,” Fondren says.

The walk is now an annual event. “If we do not embrace all of our communities, if our communities do not embrace us, we're not going to succeed in what we do,” says Scott Babinowich, chief of interpretation for the military park. “We want to make sure that we're a place that the community feels welcome, that we provide a place where they can explore, that they can exercise, that they can escape the city life.”

The Vicksburg Community Garden, a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River, shines as an example of how groups in Vicksburg are working together to capitalize on the city’s existing resources.

It’s a trend in this city. With funding tight for any project—from revitalizing downtown Vicksburg to expanding career-building programs in schools—community partners are pooling financial resources and manpower, as well as reaching across boundaries to align goals and deliver the biggest bang for their efforts.

The community garden started when an agriculture expert from Alcorn State University reached out to Shape Up Vicksburg’s Linda Fondren with an idea: Let’s start a community garden to teach people how to grow their own food and maintain a healthier diet.

Fondren was a logical person to approach. She started a crusade in 2009 to get residents in her hometown to lose weight and to start walking as a first step toward fitness. More than 2,000 people signed a pledge to lose weight and over the course of 17 weeks, they lost a collective 15,000 pounds, roughly the weight of five vehicles.

A community garden could be a classroom on nutritious eating. But they needed the land. Fondren went to the city. “When she calls, we help,” says Marcia Weaver, Vicksburg’s Director of Special Projects. After viewing several potential plots, the group settled on a wide, open spot next to the Vicksburg Municipal Airport. The city agreed to pay for water and to mow surrounding grounds.

The raised beds and garden plots have been growing strong this year. Community members, master gardeners, civic groups and local schools have provided volunteers and supplies to help the garden thrive.

But could the garden be even more? My Brother’s Keeper Inc., a nonprofit that works to enhance the health of minority populations, provided a grant for playground equipment and a walking trail around the perimeter of the property. “Now we have parents coming out and they’re walking and getting involved in the garden,” Fondren says.

Building on the children’s interest in the garden, the United Way decided to establish literacy programs at the site. Why not bring books outside and read to children under the trees?