What We Do

From the beginning, we’ve listened to our community and developed programs to help inspire families and change lives in Jackson.

When the lives of the kids and families we serve are improved, then our entire community is improved since the well-being of our community is inherently tied into the well-being of our entire city.

Operation Shoestring primarily serves the Georgetown, Virden Addition, Mid-City and Midtown neighborhoods in the heart of central Jackson, just a stone’s throw from Mississippi’s capitol building.

Our work has taken many forms over the past five decades. Today, most of our work consists of high-quality afterschool and summer programs for children and youth and supportive services for their families and other community residents.

From mentoring kids to helping out at parent cooking classes, we have a role for everyone to play here!

Operation Shoestring’s work depends heavily on a diverse coalition joining hands in helping support the self-determined goals of the kids, families, and other residents we serve. We’d love for you to join us as we work towards building a more hopeful and healthy future for us all. As we say at Operation Shoestring: “we all rise together.”

Project Rise

Operation Shoestring’s Project Rise afterschool and summer program for pre-K-5th graders provides engaging, intensive, educational, artistic, and social-emotional development activities. We focus on everything from literacy and STEM to arts and culture, gardening, nutrition, and a host of physical fitness activities. Certified teachers, volunteers and community partners provide academic, social and emotional support for children’s educational success and personal development.

Shoestring Parent Program

Shoestring’s parent program works holistically with Shoestring parents and other family members to both support their current needs and as they plan for their future. We work with a diverse coalition of community partners to address immediate needs while also collaborating to catalyze opportunities for families in our community. A typical Shoestring parent program year has everything from healthy eating and exercise workshops to mental health support groups, financial education classes, parent summer retreats, and more. What makes our workshop model stand out is that all topics are requested by Shoestring parents, and co-created using their feedback about what works for them and what helps them achieve their own self-determined definitions of success

Community Mobilization

We partner annually with over dozens of organizations and several hundred volunteers to help support the children and families we serve. These strategic partnerships with community stakeholders allow us to offer our families an ever-expanding list of services including financial counseling, parent retreats, social services, and more.What makes our work stand out from many others in our field is that we get to know the families that we serve, and then we co-develop plans of action to help meet their needs. Through surveys, assessments, and frequent phone calls, we stay in close contact with families in our neighborhoods and create programming that is responsive to their needs, dreams, and desires.

Oral History Program

In partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies, Shoestring is hosting a postdoctoral fellow who is facilitating a community-based oral history project. A committee of people who live or work in central Jackson are developing the interview protocols and identify interviewees. Oral history committee members are conducting interviews with over thirty residents of central Jackson to record their stories, knowledge, and memories, with a particular emphasis on the theme of “raising children.” Audio and transcripts from the project will be archived at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University and shared with the local community.