It’s a success story adding more chapters every day. More than 150 campaign leaders, volunteers and leaders in business, the arts and education have joined together in support of the This is Home Capital Campaign for the new Mississippi Children's Museum (MCM).

The new museum proudly announced that after the solicitation of lead gifts, and five months of active solicitation in the public phase more than $18.5 million has been committed to the project. The MCM has received five Signature Level gifts of $1 million or more and 35 Lead Donors have contributed $100,000 or more.

The campaign began only one month before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Active solicitations were suspended until January 2006 when campaign leaders decided that the mission and goals of the MCM were too important for the future of the state’s children to delay the campaign any longer.

Museum planners will break ground in late summer of 2008 and open the museum doors in 2010. Five major exhibit themes will fill 20,000-square-feet of the 43,000-square-foot building located within the LeFleur’s Bluff State Park on the north side of Jackson, Mississippi.

Mississippi’s rich historical and artistic heritage will serve as the thematic canvas integrating the exhibits that address health and nutrition, literacy and science and technology – the essential building blocks for a brighter future for the state’s children.