LOWNDES COUNTY – Penny Mansell said the Wise Start Early Childhood Project has taken several strides in accomplishing its goal of benefitting Lowndes County since getting up and running in April 2025 at Mississippi University for Women’s Center for Education.
The early childhood development initiative she directs has already begun offering free developmental screenings to all eligible children and continues to collect data to inform the needs of area students and identify gaps in existing services.
But to make a real practical impact in childcare centers like Columbus Christian School, the program has been seeking additional funding for classroom kits with educational materials like arts and crafts supplies and books.
Thursday night the center received $3,500 from the Lowndes Community Foundation to fund 30 of those kits.
“Everything right now is so expensive, and childcare is extremely costly to the parent, costly to the provider experience,” Mansell told The Dispatch. “… And so, when we have funding like this to help with those extra items to go in a classroom and to teach a teacher how to use them appropriately with the kids. It just makes for a better experience all the way around.”
LCF hosted its biennial Community Forum Thursday and announced more than $40,000 in grant funding to the Wise Start Early Childhood Project, along with 14 other local organizations and nonprofits.
LCF, an affiliate of CREATE Foundation in Tupelo, is a charitable foundation that uses its endowment to provide grant funding for nonprofits and community organizations aiming to benefit Lowndes County.
Chanley Rainey, LCF co-chair, told The Dispatch the foundation was excited to announce the 15 winners the board had selected from among the 24 applications it received for the 2026 grant cycle.
“We worked really hard to do it that fast so that we could (announce them) before we get into the craziness of the holidays,” Rainey said. “… It’s great to get to be a small part of the work that all these organizations are doing, and get to support them.”
Some of the top recipients included $5,000 each to the Paroled2Pride program in Columbus, which assists non-violent formerly incarcerated individuals reenter society; and Columbus Air Force Base’s Top III Program, which provides leadership training to non-commissioned officers at the base; and $4,500 to FORGE, an area nonprofit that promotes skilled trades and career readiness, for a children’s construction competition.
Others receiving grant funding, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, included Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, Golden Triangle Theater, Columbus Arts Council, Mississippi Press Foundation-The Commercial Dispatch’s Community News Fund, St. Vincent de Paul, Safe Haven, The Father’s Child Ministry, Junior Auxiliary of Columbus, Helping Hands, and Friendly City Books Community Connection.
Rainey noted that the more than $40,000 the organization awarded this year was about $5,000 more than last year because of several additional revenue sources that boosted the foundation’s endowment this year.
Those included $35,000 from the group’s first-ever fundraiser in July 2025 and an additional $90,000 the foundation received from misplaced Walmart stock in the foundation’s name earlier this year.
The foundation awarded grants based on five primary areas – education, crime and addiction, poverty, community outreach and leadership vision – which Rainey said are the guiding values for the foundation.
Those five values are also the pillars of the foundation’s task force program, which, after reconvening in April following a two-year hiatus, helped to inspire about half of the grants that LCF selected this year, said Jan Eastman, LCF executive director.
“We got grant applications from every one of them,” Eastman said. “And what we’re hoping through this effort this year is to really not only keep them energized (but also) keep them going and focused.”
Task force groups
Since that meeting in April, Rita Felton, LCF project manager, said most of the five task force groups have met at least quarterly to develop ideas for collaboration in Columbus and the broader Lowndes County area.
Previously, the task forces have produced ideas ranging from encouraging legislation in 2019 to ban kratom in Lowndes County to the creation of the Fresh Start Tiny Home Village on Airline Road by the Golden Triangle Regional Homeless Coalition.
Felton said that now that the foundation is through with this year’s grant cycle, she hopes the task forces to develop more long-term ideas or approaches to area issues and appoint group leaders to drive the efforts.
“What we would like to see is going from just having conversations to having collaborative action,” Felton said. “That is our vision from conversation to collaborative action, meaning bringing nonprofits together that have a passion for the same issues and the concerns that we’re having, and bringing them together in such a way where we can do some more to gain traction and momentum to make more things happen.”
Beyond the task force groups meeting more regularly, Rainey said she wants the foundation to host more consistent county-wide events like Thursday’s community conversation to keep momentum going on conversations between local nonprofit and organizational leaders about existing resources and future needs in the community.
“(We want to) strengthen the efforts that all of these groups are making, and we see the task forces (as) a way that it can do that,” Rainey said. “… By (hosting) events like this one, publicizing all the different organizations so that people who are looking for an opportunity to volunteer, or people who are thinking about these problems in our community, they don’t … (have) to go out and reinvent the wheel. They can learn that there are already really great efforts underway, and they can go work and offer their expertise, their ideas to those organizations.”
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