- This month on The SPARK, our theme is "Caring for People".

We'll learn about a statewide organization offering free resources and training to help prevent suicides, a Christian humanitarian organization supporting refugees and other immigrants in vulnerable situations as they rebuild their lives in Memphis, and an HR solutions company that expanded to Memphis with an emphasis on making a difference in the community.

We'll also share a special moment from our SPARK Awards 2024.

- 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, My Town Movers, My Town Roofing, and by First Tee Tennessee - Memphis.

- 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 a statewide organization providing free training and resources to help prevent suicide.

We're here with Anna Sever, the Executive Director of the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.

And let's start out, give us some background on the organization.

- Thank you.

It's great to be with you this afternoon.

And we are on our 25th anniversary this upcoming year, serving all 95 counties across Tennessee.

Our network is made up of staff, a 30-member advisory council and volunteers.

We started out with just a couple of staff people and passionate individuals that wanted to make a difference across Tennessee.

And many, even I could say most of us, are compassionate about suicide prevention because we ourselves have known someone lose their lives to suicide.

And we believe each suicide death is one too many.

Our mission is not only to reduce suicide deaths, but the full range of suffering surrounding suicide.

And so to do so, yes, we provide education and training, consultation, and coordination on post-tension activities should a suicide tragedy occur to hopefully help make that pain a little bit less for those left behind, and also as a form of prevention in itself.

- Talk about the resources that are available as well.

And that will lead us into some of the other things like 988, which we'll talk about as well.

But talk about the free resources.

- One of the resources that we are promoting is a program called Sources of Strength.

It is a youth research-informed upstream prevention program that focuses on developing coping skills and resiliency.

And we have been able to train 10 organizations in the last few months, and we have funding of over $6,000 in value to help rural organizations serving middle and high school students and children to stand up those programs.

That's one.

Another resource is we have a public surveillance data system called Essence Alerts, where we are able to share those out publicly.

So anyone is able to sign up for these essence alerts and you can receive them by just a few counties that you select, where you live, where you work, a mix of counties of any combination.

Or you can receive those alerts throughout all 95 counties in Tennessee.

- Let's talk about 988 because this to me is very important.

And so talk about 988.

- 988 is a free 24/7 confidential short-term counseling line that can be available to anyone, whether they are currently in a suicidal crisis or they are overwhelmed, stressed, and need to talk.

And 988 is a resource that is over a little bit two years old, but it was a transition over from the previous 1-800-273-TALK Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

It is a rebranding.

- Talk about how 988 really is helping to save lives.

- Part of it is having that less restrictive access to care where anyone can call anytime and know that there's somebody there to listen and help troubleshoot some solutions, deescalate immediate concerns, and referrals to more community-based ongoing support.

- For individuals who have loved ones and are concerned, what should we be looking for?

Give us a couple of things that are the risk factors with suicide and the things that we need to know and understand.

- Maybe changes in behavior, increases in sleeping, less sleeping, maybe you're seeing increases in drinking, changes in behavior and academic performance in children, maybe less frequent interests and hobbies.

Those are to name a few.

And then you can go through the question first waiver for training to learn more or our TSPN website.

And then the warning signs that I like to touch on, here are three.

It's not an inclusive, exhaustive list of everything, but if someone's talking about suicide, take it seriously, if they are describing a suicide plan and if they are looking for how to die by suicide, if they have access to a lethal method for suicide.

- How can the community help the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network?

- Thank you.

I love that question, great question.

So going to 988.

You can help us share the word about 988 by putting it on your website and information about what 988 is.

Share with a family member, friend, share with your community church.

You can also, we're working on an initiative to help increase the voicemail messaging that has, you know, when it says, "If this is a medical crisis, hang up and dial 911," "If this is a behavioral health crisis, hang up and dial 988."

We are trying to overturn as much of the system to include messaging on 988 so that it is in everyday life, everybody knows about it, it's a household name.

So sharing the word about 988.

There are also opportunities across many centers in Tennessee where maybe you think that you're a good fit to be a volunteer and be trained to become a 988 counselor or a paid staff member.

- Well Anna, wrap up with website, where we can go to learn more and get involved with the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.

- Thank you, yes, please visit tspn.org to learn about how to get more involved or to request a training.

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

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you very much for having me.

[upbeat music] - They're a Christian humanitarian organization helping refugees and other immigrants in vulnerable situations rebuild their lives here in our city.

We're here with the Executive Director of World Relief Memphis, PJ Moore.

And let's start out, give us some background on World Relief and World Relief Memphis.

- Yeah, thanks for having me on, Jeremy.

Really appreciate it.

Excited to be with you.

World Relief has a long history, an 80-year history.

We all know that there's challenges around our globe that are complex.

It's hard to find an area of the world right now that really doesn't have some kind of conflict or oppression or some kind of natural disaster happening, right?

And back in 1944, that was the same case after World War II, and a church out of Boston decided to do something about it.

They wanted to put their faith into action, and so they created the war relief effort.

And through some, you know, over the course of time, it became World Relief.

And that's really what we do.

We try to find solutions to some of the world's most challenging problems.

We wanna engage the global migration crisis in partnership with the church and other organizations around the world and here in Memphis, that's a part of our history.

And in Memphis, we want to see a thriving community.

We wanna see flourishing families.

People experience holistic restoration in their lives, mostly among the newcomers that are coming in our city.

- Let's talk about the model, because you do engage churches and community organizations, individuals, and you work with refugees and other immigrants who are facing very difficult circumstances like you're talking about, but you work through the State Department, and so talk about the model and how everything happens.

- Yeah, so World Relief is a global organization.

In the US, we have a partnership with the US State Department as well as other agencies.

And we welcome newly arriving refugees and other categories of immigrants to our city.

So they've been vetted, they've been welcomed to come to the US, we're working with them, and we have a number of partners, faith partners, faith institutions, over 100 employers over the last 12 years we've worked with to find job placements, housing partners, other nonprofit organizations we work with.

We really feel like Memphis is poised to be strengthened and to grow as we partner across the city.

- Talk about what these individuals and families are going through, and obviously it's a lot, and every circumstance is a little different depending on where they're coming from.

But talk about what they're going through and then talk about how we as a community are able to empower, equip, support them to get on the path to productivity and happiness and purpose to be able to plug in and integrate.

- Yeah, I'll share a brief story just to do that, an example of a client we served.

She was sleeping one night and some people came to her home to harm her, and she ran this way and her kids ran this way, right?

And we all know that feeling when you're at a park or at the mall or something, you can't see your kids for that split moment.

Well she wasn't reconnected with her children until 10 years later in Memphis, and through our services, through the services of some partners, we welcomed her and we helped her find employment, housing, kind of feel comfortable, understand the culture here in the United States.

That's the work that we do.

We really try to provide vital services.

We bring people together for meaningful change.

And we really feel like in doing that, we're building a more just and welcoming Memphis.

- Talk about the ripple impact of the work that you're doing with World Relief Memphis.

- I think we've all had an experience where we've been the new person, whether that be at our company or new person in our neighborhood, we've changed cities, and what's critical to feeling welcome is having a friend, having a neighbor walk alongside you to show you where to go shopping or what parks are nearby, or just some of the nuances of that new city that you're in.

And that's what we're really trying to do at World Relief Memphis is invite people into the opportunity to welcome our new neighbors.

And I think we've all been there and we have an opportunity to extend that to some of the world's most vulnerable people who have so much to bring, so much culture to share with us, and kindness and compassion as they themselves have experienced really incredible things and have overcome incredible things.

We have the opportunity to welcome them here in our city.

- How has this work changed your perspective on Memphis and others here and being a part of community?

- Yeah, I moved to Memphis 12 years ago to be with my wife as she came here for a program and I was welcomed.

I knew one other person in the city and my neighbors welcomed me.

And while that's not anything like the experience of our clients, I've seen the hospitality of Memphis, and I've seen it work and I've seen us welcome well over the years, as we've welcomed over 10,000 clients to our city.

And so I think Memphis is a really neat place.

It's very accessible, and we just hope people will join us.

- So how can the community help World Relief Memphis?

- Yeah, so lots of ways to volunteer, whether that be in an English class or driving people to an appointment or to come to our office.

If you like to cook, you can make a meal and come to one of our potlucks and just share who you are and your culture with newcomers and learn from them as well.

We also have ways for employers and people that wanna leverage their networks, their relationships, their relational capital for their neighbors, we have ways to connect with them and connect them to meaningful change in our city.

And obviously if people want to invest in our city and see a flourishing Memphis through their resources, we'd love to partner with them in that way as well.

- So where do we go to learn more and get involved with World Relief Memphis?

- Yeah, they can visit our website at worldrelief.org/memphis.

We're on all the social media outlets @WRMemphis or World Relief Memphis, would love to connect with them.

We've got people ready to receive a phone call or an email or a direct message if they wanna learn more and get connected.

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

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks for having me, Jeremy.

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

The 2024 Nonprofit Award for organizations with a budget under $1 million went to Girls on the Run Memphis.

[gentle music] - Girls on the Run Memphis was founded here in Memphis in 2018 by an intrepid group of women who saw that there was a need for a high quality afterschool program that would address girls, adolescent girls in particular, the decline in their confidence, the lack of connection they were feeling, and introduce them to the idea that both your physical health and your mental health are connected and provide them with a program that would connect them to really strong mentors who would lead them through a curriculum that really was going to teach them life skills that would hopefully benefit them, not just now in this kind of critical age, but as they reached into their future.

So when we started in 2018, we just wanted to connect first with our Shelby County schools and try and find a partner who would take a risk on our program and pilot it at their schools.

So 3 schools, we served 45 girls in the fall of 2018, and now in fall of 2024, we will have served 1,400 girls across Memphis.

The mentors, the coaches, the volunteers who commit to leading this program and working with our girls, they are being trained and they're volunteering their time to lead this program to really build a trusting and consistent relationship, which ultimately leads to them developing a kind of trusting relationship within the school community or within the neighborhood.

And I just feel like that is one of the things that I'm most proud of, is that we've trained I think over 400 coaches.

And every semester, we have about 80 to 90 dedicated volunteers who actually are running the program and mentoring our girls through this curriculum.

What we're offering is such a, first of all, we're actually a part of a nationally recognized organization.

So Girls on the Run International is our parent organization.

Everything that we do, our curriculum, our standards, our training is coming from an organization that has been around since 1996, and they are always looking at what is going on in young people's lives today that we need to respond to.

We are really, really teaching young people how to cope in the world, how to become empathetic and responsible citizens.

And we are also providing our adults here a way to feel like they're making a difference.

And they're not just showing up one time, they're showing up again and again and again.

And that is how you make change.

So investing in Girls on the Run means that you are investing in change in Memphis and investing in the young people who are staying in this city and will build lives here.

And they need to know that our corporate community and that our individual donors here really believe in them and want them to have the best life possible.

[gentle music continues] - They're an HR solutions company that expanded to Memphis with an emphasis on giving back to the community.

We're here with the District Manager with Insperity, Stephanie Moyer, and let's start out, give us some background on Insperity.

- Hi Jeremy, thanks for having me.

Always good to connect with cityCURRENT.

We are excited to be in Memphis.

Insperity is an HR company, and we have been in business for almost 40 years.

We're publicly traded, we actually have 100 sales offices nationwide.

So Memphis is our newest market, and we are really excited to be here.

Our mission as a company is if we can help a small business be successful, the entire community prospers.

And we're finding that not only does that fit right in with cityCURRENT's mission, but the market here in Memphis is just absolutely wonderful, very welcoming to us.

And all the deep roots here in Memphis, people wanna take care of each other, they wanna do business here in Memphis with other Memphians, I've learned that Memphians is what we call each other.

And so it's been a great place for us to expand into Memphis.

- Well definitely talk about some of those experiences for you personally, but talk about Insperity in terms of helping small businesses, nonprofits, outsourced HR, HR solutions, so talk about what you do.

- We are that eighth floor, that fourth floor, whatever you wanna call your HR department for a big company, that's what we do for small businesses.

So we're bringing those big company Fortune 500 benefits and resources to a small business that, quite honestly, you may not be able to afford that on your own, or you don't quite need a full-time HR person, but you do need support.

And so what I've noticed so far here in Memphis is, especially the location we're in, we've got Arkansas and Mississippi so close that multi-state compliance is automatically an area that we've been able to come in and make an impact because that's tough to keep up with.

And so giving small business clients that system that you can run everything through, your payroll, your benefits, your trainings, worker's comp, it just makes it a lot more effective for them to run the backend part of their business.

And then every client's a little different in how they utilize us for HR.

You really just have a great culture, and you're not quite sure how you did it.

So you really wanna make sure that's defined and continue to build upon that culture.

So it really just depends on the organization.

We work with companies as small as five employees and as big as 5,000.

So your needs are a little different when you're smaller versus as you grow and you continue to add headcount, those challenges are mostly the same.

They just get more expensive and become a little more complicated.

- You also invest heavily into giving back and supporting local nonprofits.

And so talk about the philanthropic engagement and why that's so important to Insperity.

- Earlier I had mentioned our mission is if we can help a small business be successful, the entire community prospers.

And so there's things that we do as corporate employees.

We get quarterly volunteer time for paid off, so we have that voluntary PTO time, which is really nice.

As a district, every quarter, I host some type of an event with a nonprofit for my team to get involved in the community and give back.

And then each of them individually will do their own things as well.

And so as a company, we're incentivizing, it's actually part of our comp plan to go out and volunteer in the community.

And so above and beyond that, there's other ways that we get involved.

So we do a lot with nonprofits because they need our help too.

But also we have a grant program, so nonprofits, they don't have to be an Insperity client, they can apply for a grant with us.

It's just on our website, insperity.com.

I really think it comes back to, on a local level, how we get involved and how we show up in the community.

And so as advisors, we're recommending potentially Insperity, maybe we uncover something else in the business, we wanna recommend it back to someone local.

So we keep the business in Memphis.

So even though Insperity is nationwide, we wanna do business here locally as if this new office of Insperity were our own small business, how can we help impact the community?

So there's a lot of different ways.

One of my favorite things is at corporate, we have what we call the Insperity fund.

And so over the years, there have been, sadly, many natural disasters.

There are a lot of help things that pop up with corporate employees.

And so we have a benevolence fund.

It's funded by employees for employees.

And so right now, we have a lot of employees that are in LA.

Not too long ago, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida were impacted by hurricanes.

So just in the last six months, we've had quite a few corporate employees and clients that have been impacted by these natural disasters.

And so what I love about the Insperity Fund is essentially corporate is saying, "We've got you, you're taken care of.

"We're gonna make sure your bills are paid, "don't worry about it.

Now let's focus our efforts on the community."

And so we can now give back to the community because our corporate family is taken care of.

And so there's just so many ways that we give back, and it really is just the heart of who we are as an organization.

Our CEO Paul wrote a book called "Take Care of Your People".

I mean, if we don't live and breathe it, I'm not sure how we can expect other people to jump on our platform.

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

- Yeah, so our website, insperity.com is a great place to, if you're a nonprofit and you wanna apply for the grant, that's a great place to start.

And then if you're a small business owner, you're looking for some help on your HR or you're looking for partners, I have quite a few advisors here in the market.

We are still building up our team.

You wanna learn more about what we do, refer business, that's big for us.

We wanna be able to connect people.

Feel free to reach out to me directly.

My email is stephanie.moyer@insperity.com.

Or feel free to go through cityCURRENT.

They can always connect us, but we're just so excited to be part of cityCURRENT and here in Memphis.

And just have to say thank you so much to Jeremy and his team for really helping us get plugged in and help us do good in the community.

- Well Stephanie, we love having you as cityCURRENT partners, thank you for all you and your amazing team do to power the good.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks very much.

Appreciate it.

[upbeat music] - In a world in time where so much is politicized and polarized, there is unrest and uncertainty.

Yet there is hope because of the compassion and care, the hard work, and the heart work of countless individuals and organizations committed to caring for people and doing whatever necessary to be a light in their moment of darkness.

We're fortunate to have organizations like the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network, which is offering free resources, education, and training to help people detect warning signs and risk factors of suicide, and to be empowered to help bring inspiration and hope to those who need it.

Please remember that anyone can call, text, or chat 988 if they're overwhelmed, stressed, and need to talk with a trained counselor.

Then World Relief Memphis is empowering churches, community organizations, and people to adapt to the challenges of the moment for the sake of refugees and immigrants in vulnerable situations as they rebuild their lives here in our city and become positive, productive members of our community.

And companies like Insperity further that hope by expanding to Memphis, opening an office, and investing in our city, hiring local talent, supporting local nonprofits, and even helping other organizations take care of their people.

When we put the emphasis on treating others with respect and dignity, kindness and compassion, a name versus a label or number, we truly are caring for people and building a stronger community.

So where can 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.

We hope you'll continue joining with 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]