HONORABLE DEDICATION OF FOUNDERS

Ellen Reddy has over 20+ years of experience in community-based organization fiscal & administrative management and community organizing.
Ellen after many years has retired and stepping down as  NJFC's Executive Director but still remains in a capacity of transition consultant until July 2023.

Ellen held the responsibility of carrying out day-to-day activities including financial, administrative, and programmatic work of a community-based organization that develops grassroots leaders, community organizers, while actively supporting parents, and students, and other members of the African American community in Holmes County.
In 2003, along with the ACLU of Mississippi, Mississippi Center for Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other social justice organizations, Ms. Reddy co-founded the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of a Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, a statewide coalition of youth, students, educators, community, legal and public policy groups dedicated to using cost-effective and humane methods to close Mississippi’s schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline and reform its wasteful, ineffective juvenile justice system.
In 2005-2007, she continued her staunch advocacy for youth when she co-founded and provided leadership to the Mississippi Youth Justice Project (MYJP), a project of Southern Poverty Law Center, and advocated for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. DOJ eventually filed a class action against the state of Mississippi stemming from violations against youth placed in Mississippi’s two training schools. As a result of this statewide policy and legal work, MYJP was able to achieve unprecedented victories - one of Mississippi’s training schools was closed; advocacy for an Adolescent Offender Program (AOP) in all eighty-two counties in Mississippi; and young people cannot be placed in detention and/or training schools as a result of a status offense. Ms. Reddy remains a staunch advocate for children, youth, and families living in low-wealth rural communities across Mississippi.