- This month on The SPARK our theme is "Providing a Lift".

We'll learn more about a nonprofit lifting youth and working to deter crime, drugs and gun violence.

An organization working across the state of Tennessee as a collaborative leader, guiding mental health transformation and a full service rigging and transport company with a higher purpose and commitment to give back.

We'll also share a special moment from our SPARK Awards, 2021.

- From our very   beginnings in 1954,   Lipscomb and Pitts   Insurance 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.

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

- (male announcer)   Additional funding for   The SPARK is   provided by Meritan,   the Memphis Zoo, ECOP,   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 lifting our youth and helping to deter gun violence, crime, drugs, gangs and so much more.

We're here with the founder and president of Freedom From Unnecessary Negatives, Stevie Moore, Sr. and Stevie, this starts with a very personal mission and story for you.

So talk about what led you to start this nonprofit?

- Well, you know, people think I started a nonprofit after my son got killed, but that's not true.

I started nonprofit in 1983 after I got outta incarceration.

And now it was so simple to start, I was laying on my bunk in jail and we was checking one another talk about one of the white girlfriend, you know, stuff you do in jail.

And I came to me that everybody in jail was part of negative behavior.

And I came to me and I said, if we can free ourself from negative behavior, we could empty the jail cell, still holds true today.

I've been out 41 years so I know it works.

At 2003, when   my son got killed,   I thought I was doing   a lot of good work.

I thought I was doing a lot of   good work coming outta jail,   I was working in schools   and then after my son   got shot in the head   with AK-47 assault rifle, and I could've watched my son lay on that ground for two and a half hour 'cause he was dead on arrive, and I just saw that blood just streaming down the street.

So that next morning when I made up my mind,   I swear to God,   myself and my son,   that I would spend   the rest of my life,   and that's why people   ask me is this a program?

It's not a program to me, it's a mission.

- Well and you do a lot.

And so when you talk about all the different things you do from community large gatherings, all the way in to almost one on one mentorship and role model and guidance, go ahead and paint the picture of all the different things that you do.

- We got two problems.

We got two problems.

There is you, who I'm working on   is trying to keep them   up from going to jail.

But then, my felony problem,   I gotta catch them when   they get outta jail.

You tell a man that come outta jail and you gotta put that felony on and a felony is a lifetime sentence.

That's important some years ago, mine's still on there.

So they can't get a job, so I tell business leader, well, you can hire him or he gonna rob you or me or somebody, he got to eat.

Back while ago, me and former Mayor AC Wharton, we started a program in the correction center and I'm saying, y'all want these guys to get out and join that program, they been in a program 5 to 10 years.

They don't want go out and get in the program.

Now, but they got to have something to eat the day they get out.

Their girlfriend's probably gone.

Their mama probably staying with somebody, she said, you can't stay here for three weeks.

And so he out there, next thing you know, he finna pick that pistol he finna pick that dope up, he finna 'cause he gotta eat.

And so I hire guys to help them get back in their lives.

We don't, we had gas them   get back in their life.

But what we do is clean   up around schools,   we clean up blight.

So we helping the community.

That's the same thing   as helping the man.

Now, is all of them   gonna act, right?

No, but we try to save   the ones that we can.

And I got a list of them that   came to me and got married, got two children after that, so it works.

- You have a number of programs and on your end, efforts where you go in and you're helping to do back to school drives for kids.

Talk about some of those different levels of impact you are able to give back and make a difference.

- Well, what I'm gonna tell you the two greatest impact programs I had all year, it's for the back to school.

Do you know how many children don't start at school, two weeks at three, four weeks?

They don't have no school supplies, the mother she's nothing but 30, she got eight kids.

Ain't no sense in us talking about that mother, because she had a kid at 12, she didn't know how to be,   she never had no guidance,   so she just keep doing   the same old thing.

So what I gotta do, instead   of talk about that person,   I gotta stop and   grab those children   so we can stop the   generational curse.

So I gotta be the dad, the   uncle, the big brother,   what they have never had.

And that's when   I keep my candy.

And so same thing with   this back to school,   I mean the Christmas thing,   some of these mother,   it was in the couple ladies,   put it in the paper and   I saw it the next day.

And they said, if it   wasn't for Mr. Moore,   I wouldn't have had   no toys for my kids.

That's my reward.

That's my reward and it makes me feel so good.

- Well, how can we help your efforts?

- Not just be there, and I would, Jeremy, I would like sometimes you come out on one of the months this year, and we just don't treat our children, what we do to every year, what [indistinct] that we do this in, law enforcement.

Every September, we feed law enforcement.

So we wanna get   the whole community   and my guys who work for me,   I make them come to   the law enforcement.

I say shake that man hands,   shake that lady hand,   they just human beings.

They job is law enforcement,   but they got kids just like us.

So what I really love for you to keep doing is supporting me, help me get this messages out.

That's the biggest issue.

And every once in a while if you got a couple extra dollars, I'll take that too.

[laughs] - So how can we learn more?

How can we get in touch?

- Come on, tell them.

Tell them, Shane, tell them.

- You can reach us at, you can reach Mr. Moore stevie@ffunsaveyouth.org or we're on the web at ffunsaveyouth.org, www., Thank you.

- See I had to do that.

You gon' hand your card across the [indistinct] you know, I ain't got my glasses on.

- Stevie, thank you for all you and your amazing team do thank you for everything you're doing in the community.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- And thank you for all you do.

I've been looking you up lately and you busy.

So thank you for having me.

[upbeat music] - They are working across the state of Tennessee to help guide mental health transformation.

We're here with the CEO of Tennessee Voices, Rikki Harris.

And Rikki, this starts with a conversation with Tipper Gore.

Give us a little bit of history for Tennessee Voices.

- Absolutely, it's the why of the organization.

Tipper Gore founded us and was experiencing a physical injury that her son had had and was talking with a pediatrician about the outpouring of community support just to kind of help get through the period of time that kind of put him out for a minute.

And the pediatrician opened up and shared that she actually was experiencing something with her child, but it was mental health related and the community response had been almost the opposite, actually, that it was, you know, kind of back off, a little fear to talk about the issue and certainly not willing to jump in and help as Tipper had shared, you know, bringing dinners over or offering to babysit for a little while so she could run errands.

And this pediatrician said to her, that's not been our experience at all.

And I think that moment for Mrs. Gore was we have to change this.

We have to make this something that people understand so that they get the same community level of support and care that I received.

- And so, as I mentioned, statewide effort, which means you're going a lot of different directions in terms of programs and growth but paint the picture of what all you do.

- It is a very broad array of services.

Generally speaking, we provide services to everyone of every age with any kind of mental health need.

And so that can look a lot of difference, look like a lot of different services.

Everything from in-home support at a really high intense level, working with families to kind of manage some really complex needs with diagnosis of all kinds to, you know, outpatient in the office, clinical treatment like therapy or medication management to prevention services, like working in schools to prevent suicide   through a screening   process that we have.

So there's a number of ways   which we infiltrate all   95 counties in our state   and work on just at one level   work on advocacy and outreach.

So just making people more   educated and more aware   of mental health   needs and issues   and comfortable   talking about those   and then layering in all the   resources that are out there   and collaborating with all   the people that we know that are also the doing this work to make change.

- I know that we've been going through a pandemic, but you've said that the second pandemic is the mental health crisis.

Talk about what the pandemic has done to open up this conversation around mental health and the importance of it.

- Absolutely, one of the things we understand is that the pandemic changed our norms, our life as we knew it, and it's predictable as much prediction as we could make, right?

And it's predictable state of day to day routines and the way in which we interact was completely changed by the pandemic for now two years.

And while now we are seeing some sense of normalcy, right?

We languished for almost two years.

And honestly we   called it languishing   because what we realized   is for some people,   it wasn't an experience   of clinically diagnosable   depression or anxiety,   but there were feelings of   just not being able to focus   and not feeling motivated   and feeling kind of fearful   in some cases and lonely.

All of it wrapped up into this   definition of languishing,   which is being stuck in   an unpleasant situation   for a prolonged period of time.

That was it.

That was so it.

So I think for us was just   really helping people   understand your   feelings are normal.

Everybody's kind   of feeling it too, so normalizing that, and then trying to figure out what's next.

What takes us from languishing to flourishing again.

- When you look at technology, telehealth has been a big opportunity to open up access.

Talk about access points, where it starts, technology.

How do we start accessing these programs and services on your end?

- Telehealth was huge during the pandemic.

Without it, we would've been completely strapped.

What it did for rural communities who lack resources, who lack, you know, in their community, the buildings to go to receive treatment, they now had access to much larger systems that provide treatments and opportunities for them to address mental health needs, both ones they were newly experiencing because of the pandemic, but for some people, things they had been experiencing for a while and just didn't have access to the resource.

I say this all the time and I think it's the perfect example.

If I wanted to go to therapy every week, because I wanted to address issues, but I knew that I had to drive 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get to it and then 30 to 45 minutes to get back, I don't know, as a mom of two children, a wife, a person with a full-time job, I don't think I could make that work.

So sit down at your computer, log on, fifty minutes away from the kids and your back in the game, that's doable.

And I think that changed a lot for our industry.

- How can we help Tennessee Voices?

I know you have a number of resources, podcasts, all sorts of opportunities, but how can we help you?

- Well, yes we do have, we have a awesome podcast called Can+Did.

We are sharing stories of   people who have gone through   their own challenges and   how they manage to help   someone else kind of hear   and connect to those stories.

One of the things we are doing though, May 17th,   we're having a golf tournament   and raising some   money to help people   who don't have means   or resources to access   mental health counseling.

So one of the way,   if you play golf or   know somebody who does,   or you own a business   and could sponsor,   that's a really   fun way to plug in, and that can be found on our website at tnvoices.org.

- Rikki greatly appreciate all you and your amazing team do 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 2021 recipient of the   Education Leadership Award   is Dr. Patricia Bafford of   Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

- I'm Dr. Patricia Bafford.

I am the Director of Health Services for Shelby County Schools in Shelby County with exceptional children and health services.

In a normal world, I've got   several responsibilities.

I am actually working   directly with our nurses   in Shelby County Schools.

I also worked directly   with our coordinated   school health department.

The COVID contact tracing   center was actually,   you can imagine it is because   we've got COVID all nationwide.

Everybody knows has   heard about COVID.

So what our district has done is we have increased the capacity to respond to those cases that are of being reported in our district.

This initiative started   off with just myself   and another member of the   team in risk management.

But we worked in collaboration   with the health department   to get pretty much how   we are addressing COVID   through phone calls,   taking the cases we   developed a database and the database actually we can enter staff cases and student cases in the database.

And so on a daily basis, we are getting that information,   putting it into the database   and reporting it to   the health department.

We are working with the health   department to make sure that   while we are doing at   Shelby County Schools   is the cutting   edge of everything   that's coming down from a   CDC, the Health Department.

And so when we put   those things together,   we actually have   reports that we send   to the health department   on a daily basis.

This year we've been fortunate   enough to have funding and it's the ELC funding that we got through the federal government.

It stands for Epidemiology Laboratory Capacity and basically those nurses have come to us and we've been fortunate to build the capacity to add nurses on the ground with us to work with our district staff to help us to answer calls and be able to work in a timely manner so that we can put the contacts with those cases, get them to the health department   and make sure that we are   identifying those individuals   that need to go into   quarantine and isolation.

As a nurse, I'm really excited   that I'm having the opportunity   to stand for our nurses   that are working with me,   it really pleases me to   see that somebody said, okay, well, let's get the nurses out there.

Let's see what they're saying.

Let's see what they're doing.

So I'm really honored that we   are getting the recognition.

And I'm saying we, because   this is just not I, it is we.

[soft music] - There are a full service rigging and transport company headquartered in Memphis.

We're here with the CEO of ProLift Rigging, Matt Brennan, and Matt, give us a little bit of history for ProLift Rigging.

- Jeremy, thank you.

It's great to be here.

Really appreciate you guys.

All you do in the city.

Yeah.

ProLift started actually at the end of 2018 with an acquisition of a Virginia based   rigging and hoisting company   called Diversified   Industrial Rigging.

And we joined forces   with those guys   and that was our   first acquisition.

Since then, we've   done three more   and operate in about   10 cities across the US   with our service center   here in Memphis, Tennessee supporting our branch network.

- And so talk about what you do, 'cause these are big heavy projects.

And so how do you describe what you do?

- You know, trying to relate back to most folks we've most of us have ordered new appliances or dealt with Amazon   and we've just   gotten used to things   showing up on our doorstep   or washer and dryer   delivered installed.

We provide similar services to   the heavy industrial market.

The packages we deliver are,   you know, a hundred plus tons,   forty to sixty feet   long, fourteen feet tall.

So we deliver large integrated   power and cooling systems   to different facilities   over the road   by rail and all   the way to the site   and set it safely in place.

- And I know that you   all cover everything   from warehousing to obviously   the big cranes and rigging   and so everything in   between to be able   to start and finish   a project on time,   what are some of the   trends that you've seen?

And I'm thinking things like shortened timeframes, data centers with all the technology and the pandemic and that shift online, what are some of the big trends that have been affecting your business?

- Yeah, actually the the pandemic is the major mover of a lot of trends that we're involved in.

And one was the massive growth and just bandwidth requirements and cloud services.

Everybody's home, a lot of folks using Zoom, obviously people watching more and more content on their phones and TVs and businesses being entirely based in the cloud now with email and work processes.

So behind the cloud is actual physical, you know, plant and infrastructure you have to build to keep up.

So we've seen a continued push on construction of these data center facilities across the US and because the demand has been so strong and powerful for those providers, the cloud service providers, they've had to really speed up the process of delivering new data center capacity, do it faster, all in the midst of a labor scarcity, labor shortage, supply chain challenges with lockdowns and quarantines all over the world.

A lot of the equipments made, you know, in Asia, Europe, South America, and actually one of the bright spots for us is because companies are in that situation, a lot of production of manufacturing this equipment has come back to the US.

So just after seeing so many years of manufacturing leaving the United States, it has been awesome to see new manufacturers popping up across the Southeast, the Midwest, building a lot of this equipment and other, you know, foreign manufacturers coming to the US.

So it's an exciting time, it's a challenging time.

- Well, let's look inward in terms of taking care of your employees.

One of the other things that's really special about you and your company, your team, very purpose driven.

So talk about faith, purpose driven and how you take care of your team.

- So our company is managed by a group of stakeholders that are really compelled by our core beliefs and our faith.

We just fundamentally believe that people are, the problems in the world are gonna be solved when people are reconciled to God, through relationship with His son, Jesus Christ.

So that drives us and because we've been impacted by our relationship with God, we feel the need to use everything we have to extend that message to others and help others.

So the company's purpose is to glorify God, we're a regular, you know, contractor doing business as the rest of folks do, but we pretty clearly state that to our team that that's our purpose.

That's why we're in business.

You don't have to necessarily align with that purpose to work for us, but we want you to know it does attract a lot of people to our company.

So as we're out doing business, we just take really specific measures to take care of our team.

We really just out of a sense of gratitude for God's care for us, we try to extend the exact same thing to our team.

Be concerned about them, their marriages, their finances long term planning.

If they're going through challenges with substance abuse or other problems or difficulties, we just try to come alongside, coach and equip and resource so we've got a number of different programs focused on our team   and then we take the impact   outside of our business   and tell those on our   team that, you know,   we're trying to generate a   profit to grow our business   but also take that and share   it with others in the community   and around the world that   have really significant   physical needs challenges.

So for example, in Memphis,   we love partnering   with Restore Corps that works in human trafficking across the region.

We love working with Memphis Athletic Ministries, who's been for years serving kids in our community and the families all the way to West Africa, India, parts of the world where you've got just enormous challenges with food, security, people that that really have never heard about Jesus Christ and the good news that He brings.

So we just support all kinds of ministries working in those places to help people.

And it helps our team really being inspired as they're laboring in their job.

There's a reason why we're doing this.

That's beyond just a small group of people becoming wealthy and serving themselves.

It's really so that people across the world can be impacted positively and especially here in our city of Memphis.

- Give me a story of impact.

So what's a story that puts a smile on your face.

- Jeremy one definitely comes to mind, had to do with the proximity where our business has been located.

Historically we're adjacent to Orange Mound, had an opportunity to connect with that neighborhood over the years, get to know nonprofits there.

There's one called Landmark Training and Development that runs an excellent job skills training program, an urban farm.

We were able to connect with those folks and open up our facilities to them, open them up to relationships.

Some of the people participating in their program were able to engage with our team to facilities and it just assisted in overall employability, helping them have a vision for what was possible for them as they came through.

Most of them are underage kids or coming out a juvenile correction system.

So catching young people and giving them a vision for work and what's possible for them has been really rewarding and partnering with Landmark has been a great success in our minds.

- Wrap up with contact information, website, where do we go to learn more?

- Yeah we're at proliftrigging.com where our toll free numbers are published and all of our branch locations of course, please reach out to us here in Memphis.

We'd love to get to know you, especially if you're running a business so or working in the marketplace and want to talk about how to maybe ignite your business with purpose.

Those are things we love to connect around.

So thankful for this opportunity, Jeremy, thank you so much.

- Well, Matt, thank you for all you and your amazing team do.

Do thank you for coming on the show.

- My pleasure.

[upbeat music] - Something that we all need in our lives at one point or another is a lift.

We need someone to pick us up physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Sometimes that means picking us up off the ground after we've been knocked down and getting us back on our feet again and others that means helping us transition from one place in our life and career to a level that's higher, a level that sometimes we don't even know or believe we can achieve.

When people and organizations pour into our lives and start providing a lift, anything becomes possible.

That's why we're fortunate to have organizations like Freedom From Unnecessary Negatives, pouring into our youth to lift them and keep them away from drugs, alcohol, gangs and guns.

We're fortunate to have Tennessee Voices focused on the emotion and behavioral wellbeing of our citizens and lifting our community through support services, training, referrals and advocacy.

And to have companies like ProLift Rigging with their purpose driven model, ProLift cares and commitment to supporting nonprofits and charitable efforts in our communities.

When we're providing a lift to help someone we're creating the spark to help our community.

So thank you 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 continue joining with us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- From our very   beginnings in 1954,   Lipscomb and Pitts   Insurance 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.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of the SPARK.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]