Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Want to connect across generations? Join us:

Purpose Prize

Marc Freedman Portrait

The Latest from CoGenerate

Event Recording: Try Yoda: Younger + Olders Dismantling Ageism

Event Recording: Try Yoda: Younger + Olders Dismantling Ageism

Young leaders can often bring visibility and cultural clout. Older leaders can often bring resources, networks, and institutional power. Put them together and the potential is huge. But let’s be honest, it’s not always that simple. This session delivers a primer on...

Overheard on Text: When the Stereotypes Are True

Overheard on Text: When the Stereotypes Are True

As colleagues from different generations (x and millennial), Marci Alboher and Duncan Magidson have been leading talks and workshops sharing their insights about working across generations. As they plan, they usually text furiously, sharing ideas and reflections....

*

Gloria Carter Dickerson

We2gether Creating Change
Purpose Prize Fellow 2014

This accountant is breaking the cycle of generational poverty in her Mississippi hometown.

Sunflower County sounds like a happy place. But the rural Mississippi Delta county is one of the poorest in the nation. An alarming 54 percent of children live in poverty, and the high school graduation rate is just 59 percent.

When I moved back there in 2009 after a prosperous 35-year career in accounting, some people may have thought I was having a midlife crisis. But it was really a midlife awakening that led me to found the organization We2Gether Creating Change, to break the cycle of generational poverty in places like Sunflower County.

I grew up there, one of 13 children of sharecroppers. My parents were determined my siblings and I would escape our impoverished conditions through education. We were the first black students to integrate the local high school. We were harassed daily, but we graduated, went to college and achieved professional success.


  • More than 1,500 young people impacted since inception 

  • 98 percent graduated from high school and 97 percent enrolled in college since 2012


 

Our parents always supported our goals. The sad reality is that many of the children in Sunflower County don’t receive that same support. That’s what fueled me to move back home to deliver the message of hope instilled in me by my parents.

We2Gether Creating Change offers a range of programs that inspire young people to love themselves and discover their innate ability to lift themselves out of poverty. Through workshops, community meetings, graduation ceremonies and extracurricular activities, we expose students to new possibilities, encourage them to set goals and work towards their dreams. We encourage them to take care of their bodies, and we’ve opened a food pantry to provide them with healthy food options. We take our students on trips out-of-state for a fun learning experience – but most importantly, to show them that there’s a whole world out there with endless possibilities.

In the past four years, our programs have reached more than 1,500 people. Since 2012, 98 percent of our student participants have graduated from high school and 97 percent have enrolled in college.

I definitely took a leap of faith when I returned to Sunflower County. But it was important for me to work with people in the community I came from because I understood from experience how hard it is to live in poverty. I now consider myself a servant leader. My life’s work is about leading individuals, but it also allows those individuals to be involved and help lead me as well.