- This month on The SPARK our theme is "Building Opportunity, Empowering Lives, Shaping the Future."

We'll learn about an organization helping entrepreneurs and businesses grow while strengthening connections across diverse communities.

A nonprofit empowering lives by providing diapers to families in need, and a company using STEM education and drone technology to shape the future for our youth.

We'll also share a special moment from our SPARK Awards 2025.

- From Higginbotham's founding in 1948, our insurance agency has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity, and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement, and leading by example to power the good.

Higginbotham Insurance and Financial Services is honored to be the presenting sponsor of The SPARK.

- (male announcer) Additional funding for The SPARK is provided by United Way of the Mid-South, EcOp, the Memphis Zoo, and by the Medical Education and Research Institute.

- Have you ever been excited by a new idea?

Inspired by watching someone lead by example?

When we talk about creating change, we start by sharing the stories of everyday heroes who are making a difference in their own way so we can learn and do the same.

I'm Jeremy Park, and this is The SPARK.

They're an organization helping entrepreneurs and businesses grow while strengthening connections in diverse communities.

We're here with the founder and president of Mid-South Latino Chamber of Commerce, Alex Matlock.

And Alex, let's start out.

Give us some background on MLCC.

- Thank you so much for the invitation.

I'm very excited to be here.

And, yes, this is really a dream come true, because 10 years ago, I had the vision that we really needed an organization that will stay with us, that it will not come and go.

And that's how I had the vision to put together the chamber 10 years ago.

I had a lot of support at that moment, not just from the Latino entrepreneurs, but also from the city and everyone.

So that's how the Mid-South Latino Chamber of Commerce started.

Actually, it started precisely in September, because it started 10 years ago in September during the Hispanic Heritage Month.

So we are approaching 10 years.

- Let's dive in because when you talk about embracing and celebrating diversity, but there's a lot of programming to uplift entrepreneurs and to help businesses grow.

So talk about the focus, talk about the programs.

- Our main mission is really to advocate for the Latino business community.

We want to share our heritage.

I want to expand our knowledge.

We want to connect our voices with the city.

We want to be part of the vibrant business community and also for the rest of the community to understand that the Latino business and in general the Latino community is contributing tremendously to the economic growth in the city.

And we don't want to be isolated.

We want to be part of everything.

That's why our chamber is very inclusive.

We use English as our common language.

We all are bilingual, but that's why we use English because we want other people to connect with us and to understand what we're doing, our culture, enjoy our culture, and understand also the power, the economic power that we are bringing into the city.

And also to create a safety space for the Latino businesses to feel comfortable and to really come to us with their concerns, with their successes, with their... Basically, we advocate for their voices so they feel comfortable.

- Touch on the programs and the events.

- Yes.

Our main, main events and very, very successful is our mixers.

We have done it for 10 years.

People absolutely love it.

As a result of that, a lot of new businesses connections, and it's so great to see like a Latino business that never had the opportunity to connect with a big company, how through these events that we organized they just come together and at the end, "Hey, thank you so much.

Now I'm doing business with this other company."

Also, another big event that we have every other month is our Conexión luncheons, which we bring important speakers, very relevant, not just for Latinos, but overall to the community, to speak to us.

And it's in a very small setup where we'll bring very, very powerful people that they can connect and we open the platform for questions, for answer questions and Q&A.

So that's very good.

Also, during the year we have seminars for entrepreneurs as well.

We have seminars that we empower with knowledge, sometimes in Spanish, but sometimes we try to do it in English so we can make it inclusive too for entrepreneurs, from how to register the business, how to do the marketing, how to navigate the city system or government system, things like that.

And then for 2027, we're coming with more programs, more hopefully partnering with other companies to get some certifications, so more Latino businesses can get certified to do business with the city as well.

- Well, and the best is still yet to come.

So how can the community get involved and support your efforts?

- Yes.

I want to let everybody know that we are a 501[c][6].

That means that our main funds are coming from memberships.

So membership is really our biggest thing.

Please join our organization.

I'm pretty sure you will see the value.

You can visit our website, mlcc.today.

Actually, we're going to have a new website, but, you know, right now you can go and visit us in what we have right now, but we're very excited.

We're going to have a brand new website probably in the next couple of months, so we're very excited about that.

But in the meantime, please follow us, Facebook.

We're very, very, very, very active in social media.

Follow us in Instagram and Facebook, MLCC, Mid-South Latino Chamber of Commerce.

And our website is mlcc.today, and join our organization.

- Well, Alex, thank you for all you and your amazing team do to power the good.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Well, thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it very much.

[upbeat music] - They're a nonprofit empowering lives by providing diapers to families in need.

We're here with the founder and executive director of Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry, Cori Smith.

And let's start out.

Give us a little bit of history for the organization.

- All right.

Well, Sweet Cheeks were founded in 2014 after I experienced a need for diapers myself when I was pregnant with my daughter.

And after I lost my job when I was pregnant and I found myself in need of a lot of things, but diapers was one of those things that I looked for in my community through other, like, agencies, and that was the one thing that I couldn't get help with.

And so after I started back working, got back on my feet, I started giving out diapers to those same organizations who I went to for help.

And it did not start out as a diaper bank.

[laughs] It did not start out as a nonprofit.

It was just like, "Hey, I saw that this was a need.

What can I do to help?"

I started collecting, giving them, and then over time, it turned into Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry.

[laughs] - Give us an idea, when you talk about diapers, diapers can be very expensive, but yet they are so important for families.

And when you talk about the health benefits for babies, there's a lot that goes into providing diapers.

So talk about the power of diapers.

- Yes.

I always say that it's more than a diaper.

A diaper means the mother or father can go to work.

It means that mother or father can go to school, and it also means that that child can go to daycare.

You need diapers in order for your child to be able to do all of those things.

And if you can't, if you don't have access to those things, then we just repeat the cycle of poverty so that parent can't go to work, that parent can't go to school, and in turn, that child can go to daycare.

Also, on the health side, families who can't afford diapers or don't have access to the amount of diapers that they need for that month, that child end up staying in a soiled diaper for longer, which also creates health issues such as urinary tract infections, diaper rashes, et cetera.

And now we're now having to take the baby to the doctor, which leads to medical bills.

So we always say it's a cycle of poverty that we're trying to prevent, and that's why it's more than just a diaper.

- You referenced diaper bank.

So talk about the process, talk about how it works for you.

- I like to say we're now like a basic needs bank because we provide more than just diapers, but our motto is we're the catalyst, we're the warehouse of supplies, and families are able to get diapers or supplies from us one of two ways.

We have a monthly distribution that's open to the public, and that's typically held, like, the third or fourth Saturday of each month.

And then we also have days where people can come individually.

If you can't make it to one of our distribution days, you're able to come directly to us to pick up diapers.

And then we also utilize partner agencies.

So we have agencies who are out in the community serving in their capacity, and we're able to provide diapers to them so their families that they're serving can get diapers as well.

And so those are the three different ways that families can get diapers or supplies from us.

- Talk about some of the numbers, the impact that puts a smile on your face.

- So one of the things that puts a smile on my face, like I said, when I started this, we did not start this as a diaper bank.

And as it grew, we went from my garage, like we no longer parked our cars in the garage.

My garage was our warehouse, and then it migrated to our dining room, to our guest bedroom.

And then now we actually have a space that we're able to serve families directly.

Just this year, we hit our two millionth diaper distributed to families in the community, and also we're over four million of basic need supplies in general that has been distributed to families.

- When you look at this in terms of your personal role, launching this, as you said, expanding it from your garage to your, you know, like your house, like, and now of a sudden having your own place, for you as a catalyst though, to know the need firsthand, to be able to then step in and provide that support and see the impact firsthand, how has Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry changed your perspective of yourself, your family, your ability to be a catalyst and a leader in the community?

- Yeah.

So, somebody actually told me the other day is, "Do you know how many lives you changed "because you decided to start a nonprofit that actually helps people?"

And I didn't think about it.

I was just like, "Oh, okay."

But as I thought about it more, I was like, "You know what?

That is true."

Like, I don't think of it that way, but we are making an impact on families.

They tell us directly, like, "If it wasn't for Sweet Cheeks, like we don't know what we would do."

They've used things other than diapers, whether it's like paper towels or newspaper, t-shirts, like anything to get them through the next time they can actually change their child's diaper.

So being able to be that support for families, because I knew firsthand how it felt, it makes me feel good.

- How can the community support Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry?

- So the community can support us by, one, hosting a diaper drive.

If you work for a company, you go to a church, you're in a sorority/fraternity, any social service organization, we love diaper drives.

We also can always use monetary because, you know, we got to keep the lights on.

[laughs] We need a place for families to come to actually get serviced.

Also, you know, corporate partners, if you have giving, end-of-year giving, or you have a discretionary fund that's used to help the community, we welcome that as well.

- We'll wrap up with where we can go to learn more and get involved.

- www.sweetcheeks diaperministry.org.

- Well, Cori, thank you for all you and your amazing team do to power the good.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you.

[upbeat music] - The SPARK Awards annually recognize and celebrate individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the community.

The 2025 Nonprofit Award for organizations with a budget greater than $5 million went to Porter-Leath.

[gentle music] - I'm Rob Hughes, vice president of Development for Porter-Leath.

We were founded in 1850, and our mission is empowering children and families to achieve a healthy, optimal, and independent lifestyle.

This year marks a major milestone for us with our 175th anniversary.

Porter-Leath started in 1850 as a small orphanage dedicated for serving about a dozen orphans around Memphis.

We've evolved to a major early childhood nonprofit over our 175-year history, really making sure that children and families are supported from the beginning.

So, again, Porter-Leath's mission is empowering children and families to achieve a healthy, optimal, and independent lifestyle.

We do that through eight core focus areas really centered on early childhood development, but we are true to our roots.

We started as an orphanage.

We still do foster care through our Connections program, largely working with teenagers.

Most of our work is in the early childhood space, so if we look at our preschool program, we serve over 4,500 local children and families every single day, making sure that they get the best start educationally, but also at home.

We start serving children as young as six weeks in our preschool program, and when children leave us at age five, they leave us kindergarten-ready.

Many people probably know Books From Birth.

We are home to Books from Birth.

We send over 35,000 children and age-appropriate book across Memphis and Shelby County every single month with a local affiliate for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

Our Teacher Excellence Program provides ongoing professional development for our early childhood educators, as well as partners around the community, really try to make sure that we have sustained quality and investment in our staff who do a phenomenal job taking care of children and families every single day.

Our teacher excellence program really creates remarkable outcomes, both for the child, but also for the teacher to ensure their continued success.

So our volunteers have a blast in our classrooms.

They get to be the big kid plugging into that classroom's activities, really supporting our staff as they implement the curriculum throughout the day, but we also have a lot of fun in our preschools.

It's a really great way to engage with the youngest children in our county.

As Porter-Leath, we know that we'll never be able to serve every child and family in Shelby County, but we want to work with great partners.

We've really been focused on building partnerships, continuing partnerships so that we can support other providers with our work like the Teacher Excellence Program to make sure that early childhood caregivers and early childhood teachers at other centers have the same access to high-quality professional development.

With the public and private partnership coming in on funding, Porter-Leath is able to invest over $70 million per year in our community.

We've been saying all year long, "Our work is not done by any means, but this is a major benchmark," and I think The SPARK Award really testifies to the work that we're achieving in Memphis and Shelby County.

[gentle music] - They're a company using STEM education and drone technology to shape opportunities for our youth.

We're here with Mickey Keaton.

He is the owner-operator of Bluff City Overwatch.

And let's start out, Mickey, you have service in your background, but you also too have a gap that you saw with drones.

Give us a little bit of what led you to launch Bluff City Overwatch.

- Yes, sir.

So in my day job, I'm a sheriff's deputy.

I've been with the Sheriff's Department for 21 years.

And during that course of time, I've now been put in charge of the drone unit, which is fantastic.

It's a great emerging technology.

New jobs are spinning off of this every day.

Like it's really, really awesome.

But one of the things that being at the tip of the spear for drones has done is it has also put me at the forefront of responding to drone situations.

And, unfortunately, what we're finding on almost every one of these drone operations that we encounter is that the pilots are violating the law, and it's not because they want to or that they're trying to be bad actors, it's they literally just don't know that once you launch a drone outside, you're now in federally controlled airspace and you're subject to FAA rules and regulations.

So instead of turning everybody over to the FAA, we try to educate people and bring them up to speed on that.

And really that's kind of where Bluff City Overwatch was born is there's a real gap there that needed to be filled.

- So, when you look at Bluff City Overwatch LLC, you've got programs, you've got training, you've got the drone technology.

So walk us through the structure of Bluff City Overwatch.

- Sure.

So right now our signature class is Intro to Drone Operations.

That's where we get some people out to fly that day, but more importantly, before we even fly, we learn the drone rules and regulations and we get everybody certified with their recreational certificate so that they can now fly recreationally.

A lot of people don't know it, but you have to have that in order to fly recreationally, and that's available to all ages.

And then when it comes to actually flying the drone, a lot of people don't understand you're not allowed to go above 400 feet, and you're also required to check airspace before you launch because we have the great Memphis International Airport here.

We have the Olive Branch Airport that also has airspace into Shelby County, and we've also got Millington to our north, which is also controlled airspace.

So as a drone operator, you are required to check the airspace that you're in, and if you're within airspace of that airport, you can likely still fly, but you have to submit a lance to that air traffic control station so that they know you're flying a drone in that area.

- When you look at the future, the job possibilities, the careers, as you alluded to, there's so many doors opening up and technology is evolving so quickly.

Paint the picture of what's possible with drones and job career paths looking forward.

- I was at a symposium in Nashville a couple months ago and TDOT was hosting it, and they basically said that drones in the sky are going to be as common as trucks on the interstate in five years.

We've already got Amazon and Walmart launching drones here to do drone delivery.

You're also, if you Google a lot of this stuff, you're going to see almost medical-related drones that are going to arrive at people's houses and they're going to load a stable patient into it and rush them to the hospital via a drone.

I mean, the delivery possibilities, the travel possibilities, I mean, it's going to be amazing.

And MLG&W and other power companies are starting to use them to survey large areas.

If there's a line down out in a field, it's a whole lot easier for me to fly a drone and find that location than it is for them to send a team and a truck and all that when we can send the drone, find the problem, and direct them directly to the problem.

So it saves time as well.

- Talk about the evolution of where you're headed with this, because I know you've got big dreams, big ambition to work with youth, to do more with schools and programs and even nonprofits.

So talk about some of those next chapters ahead for Bluff City Overwatch.

- Starting with the Scouts, it's been fantastic introducing them to it.

And I've actually had the privilege of going to Little Rock and teaching at their merit badge college.

I'm going to Jonesboro next month to teach at one of their merit badge colleges.

I'm actually working with the West Tennessee Scouts right now to line up something with them as well.

But being a police officer for 21 years in Shelby County and Memphis, there's a huge gap in some communities where a lot of the STEM education or a lot of these abilities don't quite reach those communities for whatever reason, and oftentimes it's really financial.

So I would love to find businesses to partner with that can help me bring this drone training into neighborhoods that might not normally get it.

And the cool thing about this is, this isn't necessarily geared towards the eight-year-old or the nine-year-old.

This is geared towards the 15-year-old, the 16-year-old, really at-risk age groups to maybe teach them and show them something positive that they can do, and the jobs are coming.

It's just a matter of time before we have... We already have more drone jobs than we have drone pilots, but if we can really get early intervention with some of these young kids and teach them these skills, even their parents when they come to watch what's happening, we could even plug them in and teach an adult a whole new skill and get them on a new career path.

- Yeah, and I think that's where... I love what you're doing, but I think there's so many endless possibilities there for transforming lives.

So talk about how the community can help support Bluff City Overwatch.

- So, I would love to have businesses either sponsor a student or sponsor an entire day event or a community, you know, however they want it to look.

But we could also do it to where, let's just say the morning class would be from 9:00 to 11:00 and then after the 11:00 timeframe, that's when it switches to the sponsor and they come in and they feed the class, they love on them, they do whatever they need to, but they're walking away not only at the end of the day with a full belly, but they're walking away with a federal certificate that allows them to fly a drone recreationally.

They're walking away with a certificate from Bluff City Overwatch saying that they completed Introduction to Drone Operations.

They know how to fly a little bit.

So it really does, in my opinion, open a lot of doors for them as they move through their lives.

- Well, Mickey, wrap up with where we can all learn more and get involved with Bluff City Overwatch.

- Man, so I'm new and old at the same time, so to me, Facebook has been a fantastic means of communication and putting messages out.

So if you find me, I'm @BluffCityOverwatch on Facebook.

I'm also on Instagram as well, and love to have more conversations with anybody interested.

- Well, Mickey, thank you for all you do to power the good.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Hey, thank you, Jeremy, for having me.

This has really been great.

Thank you.

[upbeat music] - On this month's episode, we've seen that building a stronger Memphis can take many forms.

It can mean building opportunity by embracing diversity and helping entrepreneurs and businesses connect, grow, and succeed.

It can mean empowering lives by making sure families have the basic resources they need to move forward with dignity and hope, and it can mean shaping the future by giving young people the skills, experiences, and confidence to discover possibilities they may have never imagined.

The Mid-South Latino Chamber of Commerce, Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry, and Bluff City Overwatch may serve our community in very different ways, but they share something powerful.

They're investing in people, and that's where each of us comes in.

A stronger Memphis isn't built by organizations alone.

It's built when we choose to get involved by volunteering, giving, mentoring, opening doors, sharing our resources, and simply asking, "How can I help?"

When we build opportunity, empower lives, and shape the future together, we don't just change individual lives, we change Memphis.

So where will you help power the good and become a spark?

To learn more about each of the guests, to watch past episodes, and to share your stories of others leading by example, visit wkno.org and click on the link for The SPARK.

We look forward to seeing you next month, and we hope that you'll continue joining us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- From Higginbotham's founding in 1948, our insurance agency has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity, and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement, and leading by example to power the good.

Higginbotham Insurance and Financial Services is honored to be the presenting sponsor of The SPARK.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]