Mann Scholar students and their families will come together for the annual Mann Scholars Celebration.at the Tenney Park Pavilion on Madison’s East Side on Sunday, June 1, 4 p.m., to celebrate the achievements of graduating Mann Scholars as they get set to embark on new journeys while also welcoming a new cohort of young people who will be entering the Mann Scholars program for the first time.
The Mann Educational Opportunity Fund is a scholarship that honors Bernard and Kathlyn Mann, long-time African-American residents of Madison whose strong belief in education helped ensure the graduation of their five children from Madison Memorial High School and later from universities. The Mann Scholar program boasts a 100 percent high school graduation rate over three decades of programming.
This year’s graduating Mann Scholars who will be honored at Sunday’s celebration include Chaniyah Bell of Innovative High School and Devon Wells and Nadia Ayeni of Vel Phillips Memorial High School. The students will talk about their experience in the Mann Scholars Program over the past four years and about their academic dreams and life aspirations.
“Despite our country’s educational difficulties this year, our young people continue to be resilient and full of life,” Maia Pearson, the program coordinator for the Mann Educational Opportunity Fund, tells Madison365. “Celebrating the dedication and hard work of our scholars, while uplifting and investing in their aspirations and dreams, is the best part of the work I do. Through our mission, the words of author and educator bell hooks ring deep and loud, ‘education is a practice of freedom’ and ‘if we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.'”
The Mann Scholars Program was created to provide mentoring and educational tools to students from the Madison Metropolitan School District who show potential for academic achievement but face significant challenges to reaching their full potential. Four new Mann Scholars, finishing up eight grade currently, were recently chosen to embark on their Mann Scholars journey, including Alicia Alexander of Black Hawk Middle School, who will be attending Madison East High School, Cherish Onyezuluba of Sherman Middle School, who will also be attending Madison East, and Javone O’Neal of
James C Wright Middle School, who will be attending Madison West. A fourth student from Toki Middle School, whose family requested not to be published, will be attending Madison Memorial next fall.
At Sunday’s ceremony, the new Mann Scholars will be honored after remarks from some of the Mann Scholars’ partners at the Madison Metropolitan School District and the Madison Community Foundation. Becky Mann, daughter of Bernard and Kathlyn Mann, will make remarks at the event, too.
Pearson will call each graduating scholar and their parents to the front and give each parent a graduation sash and a Mann Scholar pin as she talks about the scholar she has worked with extensively over the last four years.
“I am so proud of our graduating seniors,” Pearson says. “Each of them had to navigate significant life challenges, yet arrived at this moment … graduation. Congratulations on a job well done.”
