- This month on The SPARK, our theme is "Health Plus Safety".

We'll learn more about a nonprofit educating young women about the importance of early detection of breast cancer, an organization boldly fighting for missing, exploited, and sex trafficked children, and a company delivering plant-based nutrition on a mission to inspire healthy living in our homes and in our community.

We'll also share a special moment from our SPARK Awards 2020.

- Lipscomb and   Pitts Insurance   is honored to serve the Memphis   community for over 60 years.

We've always focused on   supporting our community   and believe in   promoting the positives,   encouraging engagement   and leading by example.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is proud to be a presenting sponsor of The SPARK.

- (male announcer)   Additional funding for   The SPARK is provided by   Meritan, United Way   of the Mid-South,   My Town Movers, My Town   Roofing, My Town Miracles,   and by SRVS.

- 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 nonprofit with a mission to increase early detection of breast cancer in women ages 25 to 45.

We're here with the co-founder of Keesha Warrior Princess, Bob Furniss.

And this is a personal journey for you and your family.

Give us a little bit of context for launching Keesha Warrior Princess.

- Thank you, Jeremy, for the opportunity.

It is personal.

My daughter Keesha was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, metastatic breast cancer when she was only 30 years old.

Just a devastating diagnosis.

But she was the kind of   person, the kind of woman,   that just immediately   turned on the strength   that we could not imagine   could be possible.

She fought the disease   for four long years,   multiple, I think 14   different chemo regimens,   but it eventually   took her life.

But somewhere through   that four years, I began to call her the warrior, which turned into the warrior princess because of the grace by which she lived and the fight by which she fought as a warrior.

- And so obviously launching this in her honor, but now looking forward, the goal is to save lives.

Talk about what you learned in terms of the stats that when you talk about breast cancer, it does, is obviously you've seen the devastation firsthand, it does impact younger women.

So talk about some of the stats and what you've seen.

- So one in eight women, according to the CDC, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

And the surprising part that I did not realize is that 9% of those that are diagnosed will be in women under 45.

When you look at other organizations and you look at what you hear on TV and what you hear on the news, you just don't hear a lot of about that young demographic.

And the reality is, as we begin to understand the realities of metastatic, there is also a stat that women who are under 45 tend to be diagnosed further along in their stages because they assume that it's something else, they assume it's not breast cancer.

- When you look at launching Keesha Warrior Princess, obviously we talked about the mission, but give us some of your main goals, objectives, talk about kind of the programmatic piece of what you're doing.

- So our main goal is for education and empowerment, the education of women, to understand the importance of monthly self-checks and the importance of going to the gynecologist consistently.

And when they find a difference to immediately call that out.

The reality is, and my wife has told me that when she goes to the gynecologist, she gets that person, that woman, looks at her body, looks at who she is differently than the regular GP.

And so the reality is, is that clinical self exam, or clinical exams are even better than a self exam.

The self exam is really about knowing your body, knowing that that wasn't there yesterday, that wasn't there last month, those kinds of changes.

- You have shower cards, you have a number of kind of programmatic pieces that you're putting out for free for people to access.

Talk about those cards.

- It is our key element.

We've distributed almost 25,000 cards since our launch   back in July of 2020 in   the middle of the pandemic.

The card is designed to   hang on the shower head   and to remind just a   friendly reminder of,   hey, have I done   it this month?

Have I done my self-check?

You can get one of those   by coming to our website   and just requesting   them, request one   or request five for all   the women in your life.

Even for men,   ask for the card, give it to your wife, give it to your daughter, give it to your, to the women in your life, to make sure that they are doing that self-check.

- Talk about some of the other things that you're doing, because you do have a number of hands-on things that you're doing and then how we can help as a community.

- So we have a partnership with West Cancer Foundation, which has been a godsend in that it allows us to engage   with underserved   communities,   that we, as small as we   are, may not have access to.

So things like mammograms   and appointments for women who don't have insurance, those kinds of underserved opportunities.

So, that's been a great opportunity for us to engage into the Memphis community.

We've also had opportunities to go into the community, not as much as we would like because of COVID, but to go into the communities, to events, to bring forward this message and to talk to women about it.

I have two female board members that are much better about talking about it to the general public than I am.

I just happen to be the voice on TV.

- We'll wrap up with contact information, website, social media, where do we go to learn more, to reach out for the shower cards, and obviously to get involved?

- So, you can request a shower card.

You can find out more about our plans and connect to us on our socials.

If you go to   Facebook or Instagram   and search on Keesha   Warrior Princess,   we're the only Keesha   Warrior Princess there is.

If you are looking to engage   with us and to donate,   which helps us bring   more education, allows us to be more involved into the community.

You can do that at warriorprincess.org, warriorprincess.org, and there's all the information.

There's much more information about my daughter's story of who she was, why we did this in her honor, and more information about how to do self-checks.

All of those resources are available at Warrior Princess.

- Well Bob, greatly appreciate all you and your family are doing to honor your daughter and to be a light for others for so many others.

So thank you very much for all you're doing, for coming on the show.

- Thank you very much, Jeremy.

We appreciate it.

[upbeat music] - They're an organization boldly fighting for missing, exploited and sex trafficked children.

We're here with the Founder and Executive Director of Saving Lost Kids, Pastor Brian Callies.

And let's start out, give us a little bit of history and context for Saving Lost Kids.

- Wonderful, great, great to see you again, Mr. Jeremy.

So, Brian, Saving Lost Kids and what we do is basically what the name implies.

So missing, exploited and sex trafficked children.

So we started about five   and a half years ago,   and the idea was originally   just try to get into the field   and do the biggest   impact we could   trying to address those fields   of missing, exploited and   sex trafficked children.

A problem that we found is that even though there's a lot of little things that are being done in individual places, most of them aren't very effective.

And we didn't find a great place that we could just literally pour ourselves into.

So once we figured out the second thing, which is how big this problem is and how much most people have a total misconception about how it works and how television says that it is, that we decided, all right, let's do something about it and make the biggest impact we can.

And so we started our foundation.

It was at the time Brian Callies Foundation and that became our current mission of Saving Lost Kids.

- So let's start with prevention.

You have a number of sides on the prevention area.

So you have a family safety outreach center.

You've got all sorts of opportunities on the prevention, but talk about your work on the prevention side.

- Okay, great.

So again, three keys of what we do, prevent, then rescue, then restore.

So we're going to talk about prevent first.

And on the prevention side, what we found out is that most children that go missing almost 95% of it or so is totally avoidable if the child made a safer choice.

But they have to know those safer choices and then make them.

And then also what really helps is when the parents have that radar up and they start to raise up that awareness level of what could happen to their children, why sex trafficking happens, that kind of thing.

So what we do on the prevention side is we said, okay, well, let's just go out to the public.

Go to where the children are.

And we'll just interface   them one-on-one.

We don't really just set   up information tables,   but we do is provide free   resources for the families   to come to us.

So free child safety IDs   is one of our biggest   bread and butter,   but ours, if we   were going to do it,   it going to be   super professional.

So we got the backing   and the support   of all kinds   of law enforcement.

The FBI gave us advice on   how to do the DNA collection.

And ours is a real forensic   tool that has to be done onsite   We don't have takeaway kits.

And the beauty of   that is twofold.

Number one, it of course   it gives us the best forensic   tool that we can have   if the child does go   missing, that's brilliant.

But the real thing it does   is it gets their   awareness level up   of what could happen and   it brings them to the table   and now that's where   the education starts.

And the education is the key.

We used to go out to   the public before COVID, and now COVID is kind of shut down all the churches, schools and all the public events.

So what we do is now bring people to us in our family's safety outreach centers.

So we have one of those that we bring families to.

Then we have another one that's a more of an outreach type of thing,   which is at the   Hickory Ridge Mall   where we actually   do seminars.

So this one's like   geared to doing a,   kind of a group of   parents at one time, or even a group of parents and children.

And we have all kinds of speakers in line, from FBI, TBI, to all kinds of things that actually address safety issues from where your children are today.

- Lets talk about rescue, because you do a lot on the rescue side, including some really amazing innovations on digitally deputizing and creating a network.

So talk about your work within the rescue side.

- All right.

So rescue is using another one of our arms that we have called the USISB.

And it works in conjunction with law enforcement.

We aren't a renegade group.

We work literally right in close with law enforcement to try to help search and rescue for missing children and sex trafficking rescue.

One of our biggest things is as you alluded to that we're just now alerting.

Everyone's heard of the Amber Alert, right.

So we love the Amber Alert, beautiful program.

And the founder of the Amber Alert is a good friend of mine.

And so it will only address though less than 1% of the missing children in the US, right.

So it's very specific, very concentrated for a great group, but so that leaves a vast majority of the kids that are never going to become on the Amber alert.

And what we're going to do is address that, and we have a new program and we're doing that with my buddy who's guiding us a little bit on that.

And so we started up our own version of an Amber Alert, and it's just called the Missing Child Alert or APB Missing Child Alert.

And the way that works is really simple as we're just starting this out of the gate, it's what we're doing over text at first.

And the text, if you text the word lost, L-O-S-T, text the word lost to 51555, texts the word lost to 51555 then you become a digital deputy, And you'll get a text.

And when kids go missing in your area, your local circle, or there's most likely the biggest chances that they're still there.

And we want you to just get your eyes open, put it on social media, just try to bring that alertness thing.

I've got right now, we've got, I just got a total on this.

We got 84 missing kids, just Tennessee alone right now.

And 99% of America doesn't have a clue that they're missing or what they look like even if they did bump into them.

- Talk about your efforts around restoration and healing.

- So once we started rescuing the kids, what we found out is in America in general, there are no real great solutions that are available for most of the children.

So there are about 650 beds, let's say in America, in general, for children that are rescued out of sex trafficking.

But for the most part, like they're either full or they're unavailable for most of the children that we get.

So here's the problem.

If you don't solve the problems in the child's life, now that they've been damaged and impacted, that many ACEs, we call those adverse childhood experiences, you get that much.

It permanently affects their future, and they become a repeat victim because they're constantly, still a victim inside, right.

And so the bad guys can use it and exploit it.

So what we are building now to address that is we're currently building the largest care facility for girls that have been recovered out of sex trafficking in the country.

The largest the thing that's ever been done for child sex trafficking.

And it's going to be right here in Tennessee.

The first one that we're building is in Arlington, most likely in Arlington, we're just finalizing all that land contracts on that right now.

And we're moving steadily on it.

We've got a 28-member board, some great people that are on the board from the sheriff and law enforcement side to the political sides.

And so we're trying to make this so much more of an issue than just say, west Tennessee or Tennessee.

This is a national issue.

And once we get this first one kind of down and get it cookie cutter, we already have it in plan to do two others in various parts of the country.

So this will be a long-term care facility, everything on site, 18 buildings, twenty-one million dollar projected budget for right now.

- Talk about a couple of ways we can help.

- All right, some great ways to help.

So let's start off with with the website, right, savinglostkids.org.

You can look there and there's great ways to connect.

So we have that slash connect, right.

Anything you can think of will be right there on our webpage.

So savinglostkids.org.

- Well, Brian greatly appreciate all you and your amazing team do thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you so much for everything, Jeremy, and thank you SPARK for what you do for the community.

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

The 2020 Recipient   of the Nonprofit   With a Budget Greater   Than $5 Million Award   is the Memphis Jewish   Community Center.

- The Memphis Jewish   Community Center   is a local community center   that has something for everyone   It has an amazing   early childhood center   an expanded fitness center   and outdoor water park, an art house, a theater, a senior adults programming summer camp, and so much more.

Our mission is   connecting, engaging,   and strengthening   Jewish Memphis,   but we have something for   everyone and it is open to all.

The Memphis Jewish Community Center has always been very proud of our youth programming.

We were very excited to be able to run   a safe summer camp this   summer for Memphis youth.

It was a safe summer camp.

All our counselors   were wearing masks.

Our groups were limited   in small numbers,   but we were still able to   provide that fun summer   that we usually do for all   of our youth and children.

So our seniors, we work with MIFA to provide them a daily lunch program where they can come together, meet, mingle, and also have a warm meal at the JCC every day.

When COVID happened,   our seniors were not   allowed in the building.

So we worked with volunteers   to be able to deliver those   meals safely to seniors' homes.

We were able to visit with   them with phone calls,   then we were actually able to   start having virtual lunches where their meals were delivered, but then they were able to get on a call   and still have that   time with each other,   which meant the world to them   during a time where they   needed to stay home.

So our cultural arts department has always been a big part of the JCC.

We have our Jewish Film Festival every year, and then our literary and cultural arts series, which features authors and speakers.

This year we had to think out the box and we did it virtually.

We actually teamed up with other JCCs around North America   and were able to put   together programming.

We had Al Roker,   Erin Brockovich,   bigger speakers   that our members were   able to log in on a Zoom,   read their books and   hear the author speak.

And it was such a success.

I think when people hear the Memphis Jewish Community Center, they might think it is only for the Jewish community, but it's not.

It really is a place in   the heart of east Memphis   that is open to all and   has something for everyone.

- They're a company on a mission to inspire healthy living in our homes and in our communities.

We're here with the Executive Chairman of the Board for the Juice Plus Company, Paulo Teixeira.

And Paulo let's start out, give us a little bit of history for the Juice Plus Company.

- You bet, Jeremy.

Thanks for having me.

The Juice Plus brand has really been around for about 28 years.

It was created way back when by a naturopathic doctor.

And he discovered a way of dehydrating fruits and vegetables in a way that they wouldn't lose their nutritional value.

And so that was the very foundation of the company, obviously dehydrated fruits, and vegetables, when they're alive, they're very pungent.

And so the company came up with the idea of encapsulating them.

So people could consume the product and enjoy the benefits.

And so Juice Plus   was born that way.

Today, we have   three primary brands   that we market out there   in the marketplace,   which is Juice Plus Proper,   which stands for   micronutrition.

You know, the vitamins,   the phytonutrients   that you need in your   bloodstream to bridge the gap   between what we should   eat and what we do eat   in terms of fruits   and vegetables.

The Complete brand which is a macronutrition.

You have some calories and it is a plant-based shake if you will, a nutritional product that way.

And then our tower gardens, which are a hydroponic, aeroponic way of growing your own fruits and vegetables at home, or in a farm setting with less than 10% of the water and less than 10% of the footprint.

So that's who we are.

- Give us a little bit of the business model because you have a unique business model.

- Yeah we do.

We are a direct sales company.

So we are present actually in 26 different countries at the moment and our products are sold through representatives, who we call field partners.

And they represent a product out there and they make money on a part-time basis by selling the product.

We don't use the term selling.

We use the term sharing, by sharing the product.

And so we are a corporate group that supports our field partners.

That's a shared a product with well over one and a half million customers worldwide.

- You are heavily involved in the community.

You're a big tennis player.

You support a lot of different nonprofits, your company heavily involved, as I mentioned at the onset, supporting our homes, but really supporting our community is a big part of the mission in being healthy.

Talk about supporting nonprofits out, not just in the Mid-South, but all around the nation and world, why that's so important to the Juice Plus company.

- Yeah, being involved in the community is absolutely a must for us.

It's a must for me as a person.

And it's also a must for our company and by the way thanks for the big tennis player, but I do recognize that it's an expense, not a source of income, so.

Yeah, it's actually an interesting story, Jeremy.

I met the founder of the Juice Plus company via the Boys & Girls Club here in Memphis.

We were finalizing a capital campaign and I was chairing the Boys & Girls Club at the time.

And that's kind of how we met.

And that one thing led to another and so and so forth.

So summarizing a little bit about what we do in terms of the community I've been involved with the Boys & Girls Club personally, since the early '90s, I'm dating myself now.

But as a company, we have a juice, what we call the Juice Plus Foundation.

That foundation is really funded, it's really supported by all of our field partners out there.

They all, actually over 98% of them, contributed voluntarily to the foundation and the company then over matches that contribution to do as much good as we possibly can in all the communities where we participate, where we exist.

And you mentioned the Boys & Girls Club, I did as well.

We are very proud of having had the association with the Boys & Girls Club as a company since 2006 or so   via the technical   training center   of the Boys & Girls   Clubs of Greater Memphis,   that's a mouthful.

And the idea there is   to get the teenagers   that came through the   Boys & Girls Club,   and also others that   want to join at that time   and provide them with   vocational skills if they are not going into the military or to college.

So they can get out there and find jobs in fulfilling positions in society, so they can be productive.

We're very, very proud of the fact that since inception, we have graduated 7,000 youth through that program and we have actually gotten 7,000 jobs for them.

So each one of them graduates with a job that pays approximately $15 an hour or more.

And we're very proud of all that.

And the Juice Plus company is a big funder of that.

- That's awesome.

Give me one more work with nonprofit, one more effort.

It could be personal or corporate, but one that puts a smile on your face.

- Well, so many, so many things do, and I'll mention quickly, a couple.

I mean, one is the St. Jude Marathon.

We have been sponsors of the St. Jude Marathon,   we as a company, for   over 20 years now.

And as you know,   the St Jude Marathon   now raises an average of   about $10 million a year for the kids of St. Jude.

And so since our involvement over $100 million have been raised because the monies have been growing towards the $10 million that we're at now.

So we're very proud of that and proud of helping the kids of St. Jude and also the Children's Hunger Fund.

We contribute meals to at risk youth in terms of food insecurity.

And we have contributed   over a million meals   through the Children's   Hunger Fund.

It's distributed through   the Children's Hunger Fund   in the United States   and the Caribbean.

So we do what we can to help.

And if you talk about kids and health, that's our wheelhouse.

- Wrap up with contact information, where do we go to learn more about the Juice Plus Company?

- Yeah, to learn more, go to our website, www.JuicePlus, J-U-I-C-E-P-L-U-S.com.

- Well, Paolo greatly appreciate all you and your amazing team do.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- My pleasure, any time.

[upbeat music] - When we talk about the pillars of a vibrant community, two of the most important elements are health plus safety.

Our children must be protected with a safe and supportive environment where they can grow up, learn and thrive.

Youth and parents must be able to maintain good health with access to preventative and quality healthcare, proper nutrition, and outlets for exercise and fellowship.

That's why the work that individuals and organizations are doing here in the Mid-South is so important.

Like we saw in this month's episode.

Organizations like Keesha Warrior Princess are making sure that younger women are more proactive with their health and exams to fight against breast cancer and help save lives.

Saving Lost Children is doing so much to prevent child endangerment, find and rescue missing children and help restore and heal them.

Then companies like Juice Plus are not only using their nutritious products to inspire healthy living in our homes.

They're lifting our community and enabling healthy change by supporting nonprofits through volunteerism, leadership, and financial contributions.

When we give, our community can grow.

So thank you for all you give and for watching The 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 you'll continue joining with us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- Lipscomb and   Pitts Insurance   is honored to serve the Memphis   community for over 60 years.

We've always focused on   supporting our community   and believe in   promoting the positives,   encouraging engagement   and leading by example.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is proud to be a presenting sponsor of The SPARK.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]