Health & Wellness Programs – Nurturing Whole-Child Health and Success

What Your Gift Supports
This initiative builds a robust Health & Wellness program so SR1 CPSA students can grow up strong in body, steady in mind, and ready to learn. Your donation helps create and equip a Health & Wellness Complex that can include multi-sport athletic fields, a running track, basketball and tennis courts, a fitness center, and dedicated spaces for physical education classes.

Your gift also supports on-site health education and services: a nurse’s station, spaces for mental health counseling, and partnerships with local clinics to provide check-ups, screenings, and family health workshops. It helps provide sports equipment, team uniforms (in coordination with the Vanguard Branded Uniforms & School Pride Fund), and training for coaches and wellness staff.

Beyond competitive sports, your support brings in lifelong wellness experiences—yoga and mindfulness, nutrition education (potentially in a teaching kitchen), dance, martial arts, walking clubs, and gardening. In short, you are helping us educate the whole child by giving them first-class resources for physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

Why It Matters
Healthy students are better learners. Children who move their bodies regularly tend to focus better on class, manage stress more effectively, and perform stronger academically. Yet too many young people lack safe places to play, access to fresh food, or consistent healthcare. Mississippi, especially, faces serious challenges with childhood obesity and preventable illnesses—realities that can shorten lives and dim futures if we do not intervene early.

At the same time, children are carrying more emotional weight than ever: anxiety, grief, family instability, and trauma can all show up as “behavior problems” or disengagement in school. Without intentional support, those burdens can derail a child’s education.

By investing in health and wellness, you address both sides of the equation. You make sure students have space to run, play, and compete in a safe environment that builds discipline, teamwork, and leadership. You help us teach healthy habits—exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management—that can prevent chronic disease later in life. And you make it possible to offer mental health support and mindfulness practices, so students have tools to cope with big feelings and hard moments. A healthy child is far more likely to become a thriving student—and eventually, a thriving adult.

Direct Benefits to Students & Families
Students feel the impact right away. They experience the joy of playing on real fields and courts, the pride of wearing a team jersey, and the calm that comes from having a trusted adult to talk to when they are worried or overwhelmed. Imagine a student discovering a talent for track and field on a new running lane, or a quiet child finding confidence in a yoga or dance class that helps them manage anxiety. These are the kinds of stories your gift makes possible.

Families benefit as well. They see children coming home healthier, happier, and more focused kids who have burned off energy in practice, learned something new about nutrition, or worked through a tough day with a counselor’s help. Many wellness facilities and programs can also serve as a resource for the broader community: youth leagues on weekends, family fitness nights, community health fairs, and classes for parents can all grow from the same complex you help build. Your donation does not just strengthen one student; it strengthens entire families and neighborhoods.

Stability and Protection for the Future
Health and athletics are often the first programs cut when budgets tighten. This fund is designed to protect student wellness from that pattern. Because these facilities and programs are built and sustained through dedicated philanthropic support, they are far less vulnerable to shifting political priorities or sudden budget reductions.

If public funding changes or policies devalue physical education and mental health, SR1 CPSA students will still have access to the track you helped lay, the gym you helped equip, and the counseling spaces your gift made possible. Your investment in health and wellness becomes a long-term promise: that this generation—and the next—can grow up smart, strong, and resilient, with their well-being treated as essential, not optional, no matter what happens beyond the full-service educational campus.