This week Vicksburg showed its colors.

On Saturday, the second annual True Color Run, the kick off for the United Way of West Central Mississippi’s fundraising campaign, was held in downtown Vicksburg. Nearly 500 runners and hundreds of volunteers took part in the event.

“We had close to 500 runners register and another 200 United Way volunteers,” United Way of West Central Mississippi director Michele Connelly said. “That doesn’t even count the people who are here with our partner agencies or those who are out at one of the color stations.

“There are more than 1,000 people out here today supporting the United Way.”

United Way of West Central Mississippi works with 20 partner agencies throughout the region to meet a wide range of community needs, and to do so, the organization seeks to raise money to support those agencies and their programs.

Other positive happenings in Vicksburg this week:

• The Versatile Civic and Social Club is offering free reading and mathematics tutorial workshops for students in pre-K through third grade.

“We’re not promising to work miracles, but we’re just going to work with them and see what we can do to help them,” club president Helen Caldwell said.

The workshop is not meant to be homework assistance, but instead tutors children on basic math and reading skills to help get them working on grade level and to improve their testing scores on the Third Grade Reading Summative Assessment.

• Warren Central High School senior Trevor Talbot was named a semifinalist in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program for his PSAT score of 224 out of a total 228. According to the National Merit Scholarship Cooperation, 1.6 million students took the PSATs and the top students in each state made up the 16,000 semifinalists. Talbot plans to continue in the scholarship program and apply to be a finalist by writing an essay, taking the SATs in November and submitting a resume.