Kay Lee sat in a chair and leaned on a table in the computer room of Vicksburg Family Development Service Inc.

“I just really feel undeserved,” she said. “There are a lot of people on our staff who deserve this more than I do.”

Lee is director of Vicksburg Family Development Service Inc., a non-profit agency with a staff of nine people that has been in the community since 1977 and specializes in working with families and parents to help them better raise their children. The program also helps older children develop as they grow. She has been with the organization for 33 years.

“We have two components, our early intervention component, and that serves parents and their children prenatal to age four,” she said. “That component focuses on the importance on the first years of life. It lays the foundation for our children for what’s to come. We have prenatal classes, parenting classes, we do home visits where we go into the home and work with the families one-on-one, and we have a pre-school program for the 2- to 3-year-old children two mornings a week.”

The goals of the first component, she said, are to help mothers have healthy babies, and prevent developmental delays by telling parents what they can do help their children meet important developmental milestones to lay a good foundation for learning and growth.

“We try to be a support for our families to link them with resources and we feel very strongly that every family has strengths.”

She said the program is open primarily for new parents, but added Family Development will work with any family looking for help.

“Our target is single moms, single parent families and young moms, but we are open to any parent,” she said.

The agency’s second component is its youth enrichment component, which includes the Girls Club and Male Image programs, for children ages 10 to 17.

The focus of the programs, she said, is to help young people make positive life choices.

“We work to promote school success, (with) tutoring and helping with homework; we work to prevent alcohol and drug abuse, and focus on preventing teen pregnancies with an abstinence program,” she said.

Program volunteers also go into schools and community groups to present evidence-based drug and alcohol abuse programs.

Lee became interested in Family Development Services while working as social worker at Kuhn Memorial Hospital, and was herself a new mother looking for help in raising her child.

“Because I worked at Kuhn, I knew about Family Development and I called them all the time, so it was just easier for them to put me on staff. I had a million and one questions,” she said. “I think Vicksburg and Warren County are blessed to have an agency like this, because not every county has something like this.”

She became familiar with the agency’s programs by referring new mothers or families for assistance with raising their newborns.

“I knew from my experience at Kuhn that it did a wonderful job working with new families and parents,” she said.

“When I had my own first baby, I realized how tough this job of being a parent is, and any information I could get was helpful, and so I called Family Development.”

She was hired as the agency’s co-director in 1983, and worked with four partners — Debbie Smith, Audrey Landrum, Linda Sweezer and Felicia Jones — until 2014, when the directorship was put under one person when Jones left to go to at Hinds community College.

“I have been very privileged to work with some wonderful women,” Lee said. “Each of them are incredible heroes; incredible women. In each aspect, we worked together very closely. It may have varied somewhat depending on what each of our strengths were. Some things we did together, as far as supervision of staff. I miss them.”

The agency’s staff, she said, “truly they continue or amaze me, over and over again. They have such a heart for what they do. They are surely not here for the money. They go out of their way for the families we work with.”

The hardest part of her job, she said, is finding the resources to o keep Family Development going.

Family Development is funded by United Way of West Central Mississippi and receives grants and support form the Mississippi Department of Health, Warren County and the city of Vicksburg and it has receive a grant from International Paper Co. Churches and the Junior Auxiliary also helps.

“Warren County is a very giving community,” she said. “And some of it blesses your heart. There are some times you think, ‘I’m not sure how we’re going to do this,’ I just know every year the lord has blessed us so we’re able to meet out needs.”

“You’re always trying to find resources,” Lee said. “There’s always about finding things to keep going. There’s always something you’ve got to be mindful of. No one resource can provide everything that you need. It takes everybody all together.”

The best part, she said, “Are the families we are privileged to work with. You can see someone come in through prenatal class and then you see the baby; it’s like we’re getting to know the family. You see that baby grow up. One of the members of our board was one of our moms when she was younger, and now there’s moms who were in the program when they were children and now they come back. You really are kind of a family, and that’s really the best part.”