Freedom School ended another summer at Myers Park United Methodist Church not with a whisper but a bang. Freedom School, for anyone who has ever been within earshot of the summer program for at-risk kids, never whispers, so it’s no surprise that the annual finale in Jubilee Hall featured the usual song, dance and shouts of joy.

But here’s the best part.

This isn’t the end of Freedom School.

It’s the beginning, for the vision that drives this bold effort to strengthen kids through reading and encouragement is going in a new direction.

Our church is spearheading an effort to open a Freedom School during the school year at Sedgefield Elementary, where many of the South Tryon kids we serve attend. It’ll take a good chunk of money and a lot of volunteer support. But the commitment will pay off, if you believe that the best way to save the world is to save its most fragile children. The plan is to welcome 50 scholars, as we call them, for after-school tutoring, mentoring and careful attention. In those hours after school, when so many parents are at work and a child is tempted by trouble and television, a year-round Freedom School can keep them on track, focused on school work and headed in the right direction.

Freedom School is not an easy program to pull off here or anywhere – wrapping our arms around kids whose lives have been made hard by poverty, the absence of one or more parents, and prejudice that still wreaks havoc on have nots. It’s difficult sometimes to engage the kids’ parents, to recruit volunteers and to sustain the excitement necessary to keep the program going.

But if we care about the world, we have no choice. We have to try.

We will hear more about the year-round Freedom School and where we can fit in.

But for now, with the squeals of the Freedom School mantra, “Good job, good job,” ringing in our ears, we celebrate the end of one Freedom School. And look with the same depth of determination to the start of another.