The Louisiana Youngsters’s Museum acquired an early current for subsequent 12 months’s fortieth anniversary. In one of many largest items unrelated to a capital marketing campaign in LCM’s historical past, the museum acquired a $2.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to launch a personality schooling and workforce improvement undertaking designed to have interaction older kids and teenagers.

The funding will help a brand new exhibit at Metropolis Park, named “Character Join Us” – a shared area the place guests can join and discover civic virtues corresponding to citizenship, neighborhood consciousness, neighborliness and repair, and combine efficiency and mental virtues, like resilience, teamwork, confidence, management, reflection, curiosity, and significant pondering.

The grant may also present for a teen mentoring and work improvement program. Over the following 4 years, teenagers can work at LCM – acquire work expertise by a personality schooling curriculum – and obtain paid stipends whereas they contribute to the idea improvement part of the brand new exhibit, which is scheduled to open in 2029.

“Neighborhood, historical past and custom are instantly tied to highly effective satisfaction of place embraced by all New Orleanians, together with teenagers,” mentioned Tifferney White, CEO of the Louisiana Youngsters’s Museum. “For practically 4 a long time, LCM has fostered development in kids and households. Now, due to Lilly Endowment, we’re growing old up and increasing our influence to empower teenagers to contribute creatively, develop lifelong profession abilities and foster character traits like management and repair inside themselves and their communities.”

LCM is certainly one of 23 kids’s museums across the nation to obtain funding from “Fostering Character By means of Youngsters’s Museums,” a Lilly Endowment initiative designed to assist kids’s museums develop new or develop current efforts that discover and encourage the event of optimistic character traits amongst kids and youth. The Indiana-based non-public basis, based in 1937, was began by the household of pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Firm to “promote and help non secular, instructional, or charitable functions.”

“Character issues and Louisianans deeply worth character traits like service, resilience, neighborliness and neighborhood,” mentioned LCM Board President Michael H. Schmidt. “Because of Lilly Endowment, we’re excited to empower teenagers to discover and have a good time these virtues in a brand new exhibit, a major step as New Orleans considers youth alternative across the twentieth Anniversary of Katrina this August and LCM’s upcoming fortieth Anniversary subsequent October.”

Louisiana Youngsters’s Museum was based in 1986. In 2020, after greater than 30 years at Julia St. in downtown New Orleans, LCM relocated to Metropolis Park. LCM now has 8½ acres of indoor and outside area, together with a $47.5-million, 56,000-square-foot LEED Gold licensed constructing. The applications and displays deal with the promotion of literacy, well being and wellness, arts and tradition, environmental schooling, and STEM.
“The Louisiana Youngsters’s Museum has lengthy been a cornerstone of schooling, creativeness and neighborhood in our area,” mentioned Michael Hecht, Larger New Orleans, Inc. President and CEO. “This transformative present from Lilly Endowment Inc. won’t solely develop the museum’s programming to help older kids and teenagers but in addition strengthen New Orleans’ place as a spot the place households and younger minds thrive. Because the Museum launches this workforce improvement undertaking, GNO, Inc. is proud to help a future the place native teenagers can entry areas that foster profession and mentorship alternatives.”

Whereas LCM has traditionally centered on early studying initiatives for youngsters from start by third grade, increasing applications and companies to older kids and teenagers can also be a part of its new strategic agenda to handle important neighborhood wants.

“In Louisiana, it’s important to make sure that we’re placing our youngsters first, strengthening their management abilities by integrity and character constructing,” mentioned Amanda Shackelford, govt director of Louisiana Youth for Excellence. “The Louisiana Youngsters’s Museum units the usual for optimistic youth improvement, and this subsequent period of ‘growing old up’ addresses the very important function they proceed to play as a pacesetter in youth schooling throughout the state.”High of Type