Nov 19, 2010 | News
This is Governor Mike Beebe.
As we gather together with family and friends this Thanksgiving, we are grateful for the many ways that our people and our State have been blessed.
We also give thanks this season to Southern Bancorp, the Ross Foundation, and the Arkadelphia Public Schools. Their generosity and far-reaching vision are helping an entire community of students afford the opportunity to earn college degrees. These partners recently launched the Arkadelphia Promise, making a college education a real option for every child in Arkadelphia. Just as the El Dorado Promise provides funding for students to go to college, the community of Arkadelphia has committed support and guidance to a generation of students. It is gratifying to know that these programs will provide life-changing opportunities for so many young people in our State.
Nov 17, 2010 | News
Students who graduate from Arkadelphia High School will get help picking up the tab for college.
Representatives from Southern Bancorp and the Ross Foundation, both based in Arkadelphia, announced Tuesday that they have partnered to start a scholarship program that will help students pay the cost of tuition and mandatory fees up to the highest rate of a public university in Arkansas.
The partners did not put a cap on the amount of money they would make available but said the program will last for at least 18 years.
Southern Bancorp is the largest rural development bank in America. The Ross Foundation manages timberlands set aside for conservation, and its philanthropic arm was formed to support the educational and development …
Nov 17, 2010 | News
Arkadelphia, Ark. — There were just three school districts across the nation that guarantee every one of their students a college education. Tuesday evening, Arkadelphia became the fourth.
In a special “education pep rally” event at Badger Stadium, at precisely 5:51 p.m., Dr. Wesley Kluck announced that Arkadelphia would follow the El Dorado school district, and have a “method to increase college attendance, and a process to ensure that the financial gap could be filled with outside resources.”
The Ross Foundation and Southern Bancorp have partnered to make this opportunity available to students. According to the Arkadelphia Promise website that went viral during the pep rally, “the goal of the Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship is to increase the college-going rate for local students, reduce the number of students dropping out of college for financial reasons and provide a more educated workforce.”
Nov 16, 2010 | News
Current seniors and future graduates of Arkadelphia High School who are eligible for Arkansas lottery-funded scholarships will have the balance of their college tuition and fees paid by a new scholarship program announced Tuesday.
The Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship, funded by the Ross Foundation and Southern Bancorp, both of Arkadelphia, was announced to a communitywide pep rally at the high school at which Gov. Mike Beebe was the keynote speaker. A taped congratulatory message from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was also played to the crowd.
A fact sheet describing the Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship is available at ArkadelphiaPromise.org.
The new scholarship is similar to the El Dorado Promise, a scholarship program for graduates of El Dorado High School funded by Murphy Oil Corp.
Nov 2, 2010 | News
The long-awaited Boys & Girls Club of Clark County will open its doors Sept. 7, thanks to funding from local and state sources totaling $700,000 over five years.
The Arkansas Department of Education awarded a $540,000 five-year grant to Arkadelphia Public Schools to be used specifically for the Boys & Girls Club. Southern Bancorp awarded a $125,000 three-year grant to help sustain the Club. Additionally, the local community raised $35,000 for the project, including donations from the Ross Foundation, the United Way of Clark County, the Cone Foundation and the Arkadelphia Noon Rotary Club.
Nov 2, 2010 | News
BOLTON, MISSISSIPPI – Today, United States Representative Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) announced The United States Department of Housing & Urban Development has awarded $710,900 to Southern Bancorp Capital Partners of Helena, Arkansas to build on momentum for the neighboring Coahoma County, Mississippi by developing a detailed, sophisticated plan for revitalizing the physical and economic infrastructure of the County, including housing, transportation, natural resources, and water systems. The Sustainable Communities planning process will follow on the heels of the county-wide strategic planning process that is currently underway, and will involve stakeholders and members of the general public developing a more detailed, in-depth plan for the areas covered by the Sustainable Communities program.
Nov 2, 2010 | News
The Arkadelphia Board of Education has entered an agreement with Southern Bancorp and Clark County Child Care, Inc., to transfer leadership and management of the Clark County Child Care facility and program to the Arkadelphia School District.
According to information from the Arkadelphia School, CCCC has operated as a non-profit organization since it was established 18 months ago as one of the outcomes of the Clark County Strategic Plan. The program currently serves 94 children, aged six weeks to four years.
Nov 2, 2010 | News
HELENA-WEST HELENA — Helena-West Helena’s Cathy Cunningham will be honored as the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas’s 2010 Woman of the Year in Philanthropy at the organization’s annual Power of the Purse luncheon. The event will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 15 in the Wally Allen Ballroom of the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.
As community development coordinator for Southern Bancorp Southern Partners, Cunningham is actively involved in helping develop a Civil War interpretation plan. She also serves as chair of the Helena-West Helena Advertising and Promotion Commission, a member of the Phillips County Community College Foundation Board and a Southern Bancorp board member.
Nov 1, 2010 | News
Southern Bancorp: an economic engine fueling Delta communities. In the mid-1980s, when the national economy was experiencing a recovery period marked by increasing employment rates and rising personal incomes, empty storefronts, dilapidated buildings, and crumbling infrastructure were sights all too familiar in the Delta region of Arkansas. Along with the physical decay of the region’s small towns, the human price of economic decline was written on the faces of many Delta residents who faced a bleak future of rising unemployment, little access to health care, substandard housing, and failing schools.
In 1986, in an unprecedented move that would change the course of the region’s future, then Governor Bill Clinton and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation announced an initiative to help stem the tide of economic decline in rural Arkansas with a creative and passionate approach to rural development banking. Southern Bancorp and its nonprofit affiliates, was incorporated as a result of this effort and has set a standard for rural development banking that has made it the largest and most profitable rural development institution in the nation, with over $1.1 billion in assets.
Oct 28, 2010 | News
Bank deposits in Arkansas grew by more than 4 percent – officially, almost 5 percent – in the year that ended on June 30 and exceeded $50 billion for the first time, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s annual summary of deposits shows.
A few banks in the state benefited from merger and acquisition activity. Southern Bancorp Bank of Arkadelphia, for instance, is now the 15th-largest bank in Arkansas after collapsing the charters of sister banks in West Helena and Blytheville.
