Longtime community advocate Shun Pearson is taking to the airwaves in an effort to inspire change.
His program, called “Real Conversashun,” airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 4:30 to 5 p.m. on WGNG 106.3 FM.
Pearson, 40, said he’s hoping to reach out to the youth in the community.
“I don’t want to see other kids squander their abilities or miss out on the opportunity to display their abilities,” he said.
Pearson worked for Communities in Schools of Greenwood-Leflore for more than 15 years, serving as a coach, mentor and tutor in the dropout prevention program.
Since CIS changed its name to ArtPlace Mississippi to focus more on arts education, Pearson said he’s looking for a new way to improve young people’s lives.
Now, he’s getting behind the microphone to try to reach out to others.
He hopes the radio show can be the first step toward building up what he’s calling the Mississippi Delta Cease Fire Initiative, an outreach group he’s founding that he hopes will one day offer tutoring, sports leagues and counseling for area kids.
For now, he’s using his microphone pulpit to speak out for a better community, starting by pushing kids to stay committed to their studies.
“Encourage, encourage, encourage — that’s what it’s all about,” Pearson said.
He said it’s all about trying to build a future for the city and start improving the area’s educational system. Only then, he said, will businesses start moving to the area and the local economy flourish.
“I just want our city to be that place that it used to be, where we were the main destination of the Delta,” Pearson said.
On the program, Pearson said he’d like to look at issues in the area — poverty, violence, unemployment and lack of educational opportunities — from a fresh angle.
“I want to offer a different perspective, to reach different people who have ideas about how to solve these problems that we have,” he said.
Among Pearson’s early guests on the program, which debuted last Monday, were Emily Roush Elliott, an architect heading the Baptist Town Project, and Larry Griggs, the vice president for operations at Greenwood Utilities and a former city fire chief.
“We’re just getting it off the ground,” Pearson said. “I’m hoping people will want to participate.”
Pearson said he’s particularly hoping to break down divisions between blacks and whites.
“We can’t help what happened in the past, but we can help what’s happening now,” said Pearson. “We can’t overcome all forms of discrimination, but we can try to rise above it.”
Pearson said he hopes the audience for his program grows and that it becomes a center of conversation in Greenwood.
The program’s call-in number is 453-2401, and Pearson said he strongly encourages all “positive callers” to phone in.
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
