EDWARDSVILLE – This Thursday, the Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities welcomed keynote speaker Gen. Colin Powell to its inaugural fundraiser dinner in the Meridian Ballroom at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
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At the dinner, the MJCH announced the new Global Research Initiative, which will enable the organization to perform “large scale research and sponsored projects,” as stated by a release published by Lewis and Clark Community College’s Laura Inlow.
As Global Research Initiative, the projects focus primarily on studying people’s interactions with their environments and how the connection with environment science can work hand in hand with other social and economic issues that disenfranchised people struggle with in their lives.
The projects will aim to find empirically-based and positive solutions to some issues both nationally and globally.
“The MJCH seeks to understand, through people’s stories, how they interact with their environments, their sense of place, and how that can connect with environmental science and improve community resilience,” MJCH President Mannie Jackson said.
Jackson, an Edwardsville High School graduate, is owner of the Harlem Globetrotters and has been known as one of the country’s 30 most powerful and influential black corporate executives.
“The center, with its goal to promote mutual understanding, respect, dignity and forgiveness, is uniquely positioned to use the environmental humanities to address issues of environmental fairness to elevate the human spirit through human expression,” MJCH Executive Director Ed Hightower said.
Gen. Powell served as the 65th United States Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, the first African-American to ever serve in the position. He also served as the National Security Advisory under President Ronald Reagan. His military career spanned over 35 years and he rose up the ranking system to become a General in 1989.
The facility, a division of Lewis and Clark Community College, opened its Edwardsville headquarters in December 2015. Funds raised from Thursday’s sold out inaugural dinner will go to fulfill the center’s goals.
For more information about the Mannie Jackson Center For the Humanities, please visit www.MJCHF.org.
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