Several of you have asked about THE MJ PROJECT’s involvement in the Central Valley of California and our focus on serving this particular part of the country, not far from where we live in the Sierra foothills. California’s Hollywood image is of big cities and rural wineries, but in between them is our country’s most productive agricultural region.  Why does the nation’s breadbasket need THE MJ PROJECT?  

Since our departure from Los Angeles 6+ years ago, we have come to embrace this unique location and have spent a great deal of time educating and mentoring the teens that inhabit it. In the process, what we have discovered is startling. Despite its wealth of success for large landowners and agribusiness, the Central Valley and an untold number of families who reside in it suffer from a cycle of poverty that is not only shameful but astonishingly difficult for their children to escape.  

We have found these children, our students, to be inquisitive, creative, and resourceful beyond our wildest imaginations. Unfortunately, we have also found them to be woefully underserved in ways most of us take for granted.  Life is hard for the majority of these students, the pressures nonstop. Some are young mothers, others young men who labor in the fields to help support their families. Many sleep cramped and on the floor, the thought of a bed of their own unimaginable.  In Arvin, Leslie taught students living in the same migrant camps that John Steinbeck shocked us with in 1939’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” Things are better since then, but some stubborn facts remain.

What surprised us the most is the high percentage of Central Valley teens with childcare responsibilities for their own siblings as their parents work long hours and numerous jobs just to make ends meet. Education is necessarily an afterthought for these wannabe scholars, the push/pull between academic success and hand-to-mouth survival often a losing battle.

Thus, it is our mission to put books of high interest into as many young hands as possible; to strengthen their minds, improve their skills, and expose them to a world where sleeping in a bed is a given, not a luxury. At THE MJ PROJECT, we view a book as an open door, a passage to a broader vision of possibilities not yet imagined. In this spirit, we appreciate your interest in our EVERY KID A BOOK program and look forward to your ongoing support as we approach the holiday season.