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Since the beginning of this school year, myself and other members of the Mental Health/Substance Abuse policy initiative have been working on a report on the state of mental health in Mississippi. Specifically, the report is focused on identifying the problem areas within Mississippi’s mental health system so that we can begin to help our partner-on-the-ground, the Southern Institute for Mental Health Advocacy, Research and Training (SMHART), improve the mental health outlook of the people of Mississippi. Last semester, we looked through internet resources, data, and scholarly articles to try to identify these problem areas. While this work was fruitful, we realized we will need more if we are going to paint a truly accurate picture of mental health in Mississippi; we need the insights and first hand knowledge of those directly experiencing Mississippi’s mental health system. To obtain this information, SMHART set up focus groups for us to intend with people in Mississippi that have struggled with mental health issues or have children that have struggled with such issues.

Early this month, another student, Stephanie Berger, and myself flew down to Mississippi to help with one of the focus groups. When I flew into Jackson, there were tornado warnings and heavy thunderstorms in the area. But, the storms I experienced upon my arrival could not compare with the figurative “storms” I would hear about the next day occurring on a daily basis in the lives of Mississippians with mental health issues.

At the focus groups, the faceless research the Initiative had done last semester came alive. Reading about barriers to effective mental health services is alarming but it is a completely heart-wrenching experience to hear, first hand, the stories of those struggling to break through such barrier. The people in the focus groups spoke about the reality of their situations in a way that was powerful and informative. We learned about new issues and heard stories that reinforced much of our prior research. Moving forward, these focus groups will be extremely important to our final report, but, even more so, they will be important experiences for me as they reinforced and reminded me of the importance of fighting for justice through organizations such as the Mississippi Delta Project.

– Kevin Golembiewski

Student Voices: From Farm to School in Mississippi

Posted on February 13, 2012

Today’s dispatch comes from Ona Balkus, a second-year joint degree student at Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health. Ona spent her winter term working with the Mississippi Food Policy Council as part of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. She is also a member of the student practice organization the Mississippi Delta Projectand is a student fellow for the Law and Social Change Program of Study. She will be participating in the Food Law and Policy Clinic again for the spring term.

It’s 5:30pm on a Friday and I’m sitting at a small dining room table with six eighth grade girls, a nun, and my friend whom I’m traveling with. The drive into the town where these girls have grown up and live was a bit of a shock, with mostly boarded up stores on the main street, stray dogs on the side of the road, and miles of corn and cotton fields around the small Delta town.

Around the table, we are engaged in serious conversation. “I only like string beans!” “The lunch lady spit in my potatoes today, I swear!” We’re talking about improving school foods, a topic that preoccupies our country and affects these girls every day. The girls like some vegetables, but love fried chicken and cupcakes, and are excited to start a community garden with Sister Kay (the nun who leads this mentorship group) next spring. After talking for an hour about food, cooking, and what they want to be when they grow up (doctors, lawyers, and a cosmetologist), we say our goodbyes and thank them for hosting us at their weekly meeting.

While my winter term assignment is focused on interviewing and learning from school food service staff, farmers, and other food advocates in Mississippi, meeting these girls is just as important for the success of this project. Through the Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Mississippi Delta Project, I’m working to help build a Farm to School movement in Mississippi . . .

To read the rest of the blog post, click here.

Over the course of the fall semester, the Delta Project’s Food Policy team developed legislative recommendations for a statewide farm-to-school bill in Mississippi. After researching farm-to-school initiatives around the country and considering how such initiatives could best be implemented in Mississippi, the Food Policy team compiled their final report, which included recommendations such as the creation of a state farm-to-school coordinator position and the enactment of an official Mississippi Farm-to-School Week. The Food Policy team submitted their recommendations to the legislative task force on food access, which the Mississippi legislature had commissioned to come up with recommendations on how to improve access to healthy foods in Mississippi. The task force decided to adopt all of the Food Policy teams’ recommendations as their own and will advocate for them to be included in a farm-to-school bill that will be introduced in the Mississippi Legislature in January 2012. We are thrilled that the students’ work could have such a substantial impact on the content of Mississippi’s first farm-to-school legislation!

THIRD ANNUAL HARVARD-WIDE DELTA CELEBRATION
 
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Pound Hall, Ropes-Gray Assembly Room, Harvard Law School
 
Please join the Harvard Law School Mississippi Delta Project to learn about ways that Harvard students and faculty are engaged in the Delta, to meet members of the Harvard community who are interested in the Delta region, and to celebrate the wonderful work that is being done to improve living conditions in this part of the United States!
 
The event is open to anyone from the Harvard community – from those who have worked in the region to those who are simply interested in learning more about it.  There will be ample time for mingling and networking.
 
Hors d’oeuvres, beer, wine, and soft drinks will be served.

Monday, October 3rd
12 p.m. – 1 p.m.
Pound 101, Harvard Law School

The Harvard Food Law Society, Child and Youth Advocates, and the Mississippi Delta Project are cosponsoring a presentation by Larry Soler, head of The Partnership for a Healthier America.  PHA is an organization devoted to working with the private sector to ensure the health of our nation’s youth by solving the childhood obesity crisis. Just over a year old and created in conjunction with – but independent from – Let’s Move!, PHA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit that is led by some of the nation’s most respected health and childhood obesity advocates.

The HLS Mississippi Delta Project’s Mississippi Policy Partners will engage Harvard students (HLS and HKS) to work with students from Mississippi’s Tougaloo College (a Jackson-based HBCU) and Mississippi legislators in order to prepare them for the start of the 2012 legislative session.  The project will involve mandatory travel to Mississippi (expenses paid) for a long weekend in November (dates TBD) in order to present an interdisciplinary training on policymaking and the legislative process to the Tougaloo College students and meet with the legislators. 

Harvard students will spend some time in the fall semester doing background research on policy issues as determined by the legislators they will work with, and attending 2 or 3 planning meetings on campus. The winter term work in Jackson will qualify for independent clinical credit for the HLS students (NOTE: students will need to identify a faculty supervisor; program coordinators will assist with this task).

All applications must be submitted via email to Cyd McKenna [email protected] by 5:00pm EST on Monday, October 10, 2011. Students will be notified by 10/14, and an introductory meeting will be held the week of 10/17.  Applications are available here.

Please join us for the Mississippi Delta Project’s fall informational session, which will be held on Tuesday, September 27th in Griswold 110.  Students will have the opportunity to learn more about the exciting initiatives we are undertaking this semester, including projects in food policy, financial services, children’s health, and mental health.  Lunch will be provided.

It’s official!  The HLS Mississippi Delta Project is a student organization of HLS.  In the last two years that we’ve been in existence, we had been operating as an unofficial organization, through an association with the Clinical and Pro Bono Office at HLS.  Last week, however, we filed our Constitution and organizational papers with the Dean of Students Office and are now approved as our own student organization!  We will, of course, continue our association with the Clinical and Pro Bono Office, as they provide crucial travel and project support.  The Delta Project looks forward to a future as growing student organization at HLS!

Thank you so much to those of you who joined us last week at the Second Annual Harvard Mississippi Delta Celebration! It event was a huge success, giving people time to mingle, network and learn about the wide range of work being done through Harvard for the Delta. We were thrilled to have so many people there and to hear from such a diverse range of students and faculty about the wonderful work they are doing! For those of you who could not join us, the panel consisted of individuals from Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard College, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, all of whom are currently working on projects in the Delta region. Speakers from each program distributed handouts at the event to share more information about their work. In order to access the handouts, please follow this link: http://deltadirections.org/programs_initiatives/initiative.php?id=43.

The Delta Project has just come out with its second bi-annual newsletter. This newsletter includes updates and information about student projects conducted during the spring 2010 semester. In this newsletter, we have added information about projects operating in the Delta sponsored by other Harvard schools in addition to the Law School. We have added contact information for those projects if our supporters are interested in learning more about those projects.

Please note that this edition of the newsletter includes information from projects completed in spring 2010, and is not a list of our current projects. Every six months we will produce a newsletter with information about completed work from the previous semester. Thus, our fall 2010 newsletter includes updates from spring 2010 and our spring 2011 newsletter will include updates from fall 2010, and so on.

Special thanks to Hannah Orlansky for the fabulous layout of the newsletter and her ongoing communications and design assistance!

Please click here to see a copy of the spring 2010 newsletter: Fall 2010 Newsletter