Nadia Dale is doing everything she can think of to make high school students want to go to college.
Columbus Municipal School District’s outreach coordinator is in her second year leading trips to universities, leading trips to industries, recruiting and training tutors, recruiting parents and asking business people to explain the importance of higher education to students. And those are just the ways and means being employed through the Advanced Placement Incentive Grant which funds her position. Dale, an experienced community activist at the age of 27, even pulled strings to get the Jackson State University Sonic Boom marching band to perform at the Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival Oct. 1.
Of course, getting her alma mater’s band to rock Seventh Avenue was intended for the enjoyment of all of Columbus and the Golden Triangle, but it was a special wink to students of all ages who may be on the fence about attending college. An taste of the fun they could experience on a regular basis if they continue in their educations.
“It was great to see the (high school) bands there and the baby youth organizations. And they see the high school girls, the Zetas, (march in the parade) and they’re like ‘I want to do that when I get to high school.’ And then you have the high school girls that are looking at the J-settes (dance line) who are like “I want to do that when I get to college,'” said Dale.
As outreach coordinator, Dale’s job is to facilitate moments like that. Through the API grant, she works with two specific groups of students. There are the Advanced Placement students, who are already ahead of the curve but need motivation to stay ahead. Then there are the AVID students, who are Advancing Via Individual Determination.
The AVID program targets students who aren’t necessarily drop-out risks, but they’re not on the AP end of the spectrum, either. They’re students who will likely graduate but may not continue further without the right motivation.
That’s where Dale comes in. And she’s been preparing for a job like this for the past 8 years.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from JSU, where she was a J-sette herself, in 2005, Dale moved on to New York University where she earned her masters’ in mental health and wellness counseling.
While in New York, she worked two years as a case manager for Groundwork Inc., a nonprofit in Brooklyn, doing basically the same thing she now does for the CMSD.
She founded her own nonprofit, Dance 4A Cure, in 2004 and has participated in numerous volunteer and service projects in her hometown of West Point, down to New Orleans and back up to New York.
Tell us a little more about the AVID program.
There are 20 students (all freshmen) in the program. This being the pilot year of a three-year program, last year we had interviews at Lee Middle School with eighth graders who were recommended by their teachers. They’re average students who, with a little push, could be straight-A students.
We started working with some students last year and did college tours and industry tours of Mississippi University for Women and American Eurocopter.
One of the goals is parental involvement. That’s a huge piece. Last year the goal was just to try to get that parent committee together. This year we have a committee that’s about 10 parents strong.
Isn’t there already a parent-teacher organization for that?
Don’t get me wrong, those organizations do care about students, but this organization’s sole focus is: How do we support the child? Instead of getting a rundown of what’s happening at the school or what disciplinary issues might be happening, the API grant committee’s goal is for parents to sit down and talk about keeping the kids motivated and encouraged.
And we need more involvement from nonprofits and the business community because another part of what we do is to keep the parents motivated. As an incentive to come to meetings Rose’s Nails gave us free manicures and last month Applebees gave us free family meals. Walmart has supported us with a lot of water the AVID kids passed out at the Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival. That was their first community service project.
You were also heavily involved in Seventh Avenue. How did you get the Sonic Boom to come up and play?
I had to handle the negotiations of it through my relationship with those directors. But when it came to getting them up here financially, a lot of good people pulled together. The Seventh Avenue Committee had a lot to do with that. Definitely the JSU alumni chapter here and in West Point.
Aside from JSU being here, we had a lot of great people and things going on in that parade. I don’t think I realized it at the time because I had been working on it for like two months, just calling people, e-mailing registration forms.
In the capacity of your work with Seventh Avenue, you were representing your own organization, Dance 4A Cure. Does your work with your organization and your job with the CMSD ever cross over?
They do quite a bit. Actually, part of my responsibility is to reach out to different community organizations and see where we can partner.
We also help with dance lines from local high schools. We work with 10-15 girls from West Point High School and 10-15 from Columbus High School. We do everything from etiquette classes to community service.
So you started this job part-time last October in the midst of running your own nonprofit and volunteering all over the place. How long did it take to get acclimated?
I took the job and sat for like a month trying to figure out who I was and what was happening with all of this. We did college tours, but they were local because I felt like the students didn’t have a good grasp of who I was and I didn’t have a grasp of them.
Last year was such a blur after I got back from Africa.
Wait. You were in Africa?
Yeah, I was there two months doing an internship in Uganda, in the town of Gulu, working for One World Foundation. It’s an organization was started by two African American students at Yale University to give other minorities the opportunity to travel to underdeveloped countries and kind of compare struggles and talk about social justice issues and human rights issues.
It was hard work and a life-changing experience but it was a real transition coming back.
What type of work were you doing?
One World partners with another agency that needed data collected because that was the phase their program was in. They were looking to get funding and lacked the written documentation of the work they were doing, so we had to do a needs assessment for them.
We worked with young community leaders holding meetings in two different villages every week. Then we would come back two other days and do assessments of their income generating activities. If they raised goats we would ask them how many goats they raised and how much it costs to feed them.
So you spent two months gathering this information? You must have talked to a lot of people.
I’ll tell you, thousands. It was thousands.
It was so amazing. Well, every day wasn’t amazing. Some days it was just disheartening. But even on those days it was still amazing. You’d see the most impoverished situations. People would show you where they got their water from and it’s just a hole in the ground with muddy water and they’re like “We’re so happy you’re here. Are you hungry?”
Mind you, this area had been in a civil war for 22 years and they’ve only came out of war this year.
Have your experiences in Africa colored your work here?
It hasn’t as much as I would like for it to, but partially because not many people know I had that experience.
For me, it makes me a lot more appreciative of the resources I have to get my job done.
I would love to see, at some point, us take a small group of students to an underdeveloped country. One of the women we talked to was
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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