- This month on The Spark our theme is "Research, Conservation, and Restoration".

We'll learn more about a collaboration identifying the root causes of employment roadblocks in Memphis so solutions can be implemented to help fight poverty, a conservation organization working statewide to protect land important to the people of Tennessee, and a nonprofit repairing donated vehicles and providing them to families in need.

We'll also share a special moment from our Spark Awards 2023.

- 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 sp onsor of The Spark.

- (male announcer) Ad ditional funding for The Spark is provided by United Way of the Mid-South, EcOp, the Memphis Zoo, and by My Town Movers, My Town Roofing.

- 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.

It's a collaboration focused on identifying the root causes of employment barriers here in Memphis so solutions can be implemented.

We're here with the CEO of Slingshot Memphis, Jared Barnett, and Jared, let's start.

Give us some background on Slingshot Memphis, MDRC, and this collaboration known as MemWorks.

- Yeah.

Fantastic, Jeremy.

Thank you.

So Slingshot Memphis is an organization that exists to help our community understand what's effective at fighting poverty so we can support what works, or if it doesn't work, we can make it better.

We do that in a unique way by using analytics, research, and other business practices to bring that same rigor to measuring that we do in every other part of our society.

And so it's a way to be more evidence-based as we fight poverty versus just relying on good intentions and effort.

MDRC is a national research organization that has been around for 50 years, and they kind of have this broad reach across the nation.

Slingshot has this depth of knowledge around Memphis, and we said, "Let's work together on something that can really help our community."

And we settled on workforce development, given all the kind of momentum going on right now.

we hear about all this funding coming to Memphis, all this expansion, and we said, "How can we contribute "so that in particular, people experiencing poverty "aren't left behind from benefiting from this time in Memphis."

- Talk about some of the findings that are starting to come about and what you're already starting to see.

- Yeah, so we've identified 11 things that we feel confident and there's lots of evidence are, are really impeding employment pathways for people experiencing poverty.

Some of these things are like kind of counterintuitive.

So adult literacy was one.

There's 100,000 people in Memphis experiencing poverty that struggle with literacy and numeracy to the point where they can't participate in some of these jobs.

Trauma, especially at childhood, is another really big one.

That impacts things like job dependability, interpersonal communication.

Our systems, I'd say in Memphis we have components of a workforce system, but they're not functioning as a system.

So trying to navigate the system from a place of experiencing poverty is virtually impossible in my opinion.

And so there's these and others that we've identified that really are creating these barriers that keep people who otherwise would be able to progress into these living wage jobs.

They continue to provide these roadblocks and these barriers that just are so hard to overcome when you lack some of the resources or kind of social networks to help you overcome them.

- Talk about some of the solutions and the innovations that are already starting to bubble up.

- Well, a couple of these exciting things, and when you look at something like adult literacy, right now we have over 100,000 people, and there is maybe two or three organizations that are trying to help that population.

And so what we need is develop some new solutions that provide academic remediation support for people who are already enrolled in a technical training program or a two-year program so they can successfully complete that or are able to help them, those who already have a high school diploma or a GED and need to be able to improve their literacy or numeracy proficiency so they can actually enter those programs.

And so there's kind of these bridge programs that you can help people get from where they are into those programs.

There's a co-requisite model that helps people who are already enrolled kind of concurrently get the remediation they need while they're going through, you know, a welding course or an automotive track to do that.

So that's one opportunity.

Another one is around kind of this centralized workforce challenge that we have.

And there's two really effective solutions there.

One, we need to centralize intermediary that's helping facilitate the needs of the employers with what's being provided by the training providers, which with the services that are being provided by the nonprofits that are providing these wraparound supports, so that these things are all working together.

Right now we have a lot of kind of individual silos trying to work.

We have some things that are happening, but we need this intermediary that helps facilitate that so this runs efficiently.

And on the flip side of that, we need a centralized organization that helps people navigate the system.

- What's been for you an aha moment as you've gone through this process, and maybe how it's reshaped your perspective of the opportunities and the hope for the future?

- I think the biggest thing is that without digging into the data and without talking to the actual people who are experiencing poverty trying to travel these pathways, there's things that I never would've realized, because they weren't things I experienced in my own kind of career growth, right?

And I kind of took some of th ose things for granted, right?

Like I had the opportunity to go to college, and I learned all sorts of careers in college, right?

You have clubs, you have faculty, you have all these events.

And so I just, it felt natural to me, but when you don't have the opportunity to be in a post-secondary environment like that, you don't get exposed to all these careers, and you're much more narrow on just kind of what you see your neighbors do, and so that leads to an aptitude misalignment, right?

Like you don't know what you're good at, you don't know what careers might really value your unique traits, and so you end up joining careers that just you're not excited about or you don't have a passion for.

And we all know that that never le ads to good outcomes, right?

We all hate doing things that just we're not good at.

And so, you know, if we think about that for us, it's there.

And so that's one example of just the proximity needed to really understand this from the lens of people experiencing poverty, right?

The literacy was one that boggled my mind.

The trauma is another one that you just, without being in the data and talking to people, you don't realize.

You know, we hear things about transportation, but understanding it from the lens of, you know, the different people in different parts of the community and what that means, right?

It's not just adding another bus line, right?

We found that, you know, there's only a handful of jobs that you can access in a three-hour roundtrip bus ride.

But it's other forms of transportation.

How do we address private transportation solutions, right, that help people overcome that barrier.

And so it really was this idea around just being proximate and understanding things that just wouldn't be intuitive for me because of the experience I had growing up or other people would have growing up, and really understanding it from the lens of those who need it most and from their own voice.

- So where do we go to learn more and get involved with MemWorks?

- Yeah, so we have a website called memworks.org, M-E-M-W-O-R-K-S, and we have all of the findings on that.

You can learn about the MemWorks project, you can learn about all these roadblocks that we've uncovered.

You can learn about the population experiencing poverty.

And in the coming weeks we'll be sharing a lot of the solutions that we've identified that have the evidence of being effective so that we're all empowered to know what to do to address these challenges.

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

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks, Jeremy.

Really appreciate it.

[upbeat music] - They're a conservation organization working statewide to protect land important to people of Tennessee.

We're honored to have with us the vice president of the Land Trust for Tennessee, Emily Parish.

And let's start, give us a little bit of history for the Land Trust for Tennessee.

- Sure, thanks for having me.

So yes, we are a conservation statewide nonprofit organization.

We were actually founded in 1999, so exciting news is we're celebrating our 25th anniversary this year.

So we were started actually by Phil Bredesen.

Between being mayor of Nashville and being the governor, he decided to start our organization, and very intentionally, our board decided for us to be statewide from the beginning.

So even though our main office is here in Nashville, we are available to work across the state with landowners.

So over the last 25 years we've conserved over 136,000 acres across Tennessee in over 450 projects.

So we've done a lot in a short time, it feels like.

- Give us some of the projects, the most notable ones for Shelby County and the Memphis area.

- Sure, well, the most notable would be Shelby Farms Park, and that's a pretty unique setup where we are working on a public pr operty to conserve land, 'cause most of what we do is work with private landowners.

We also have several conservation easements with private landowners in the Memphis area.

And recently we worked with a family who added some land to T.O.

Fuller State Park, and we were able to help them donate that land and help them through that process.

But I would say, yes, the largest project and the most visible would be Shelby Farms Park.

- You mentioned a conservation easement.

Go ahead and describe that, and then kind of how you work your magic with the landowners and the communities.

- Sure, well, so a conservation easement, it's a fancy word, but the end of the day it's really just a legal agreement between the landowner and the land trust that is designed to protect land forever.

And yes, I said forever.

That always throws our law st udents and lawyers for a loop, but they are intended to last perpetually.

And those documents are tailored to each specific property where we work.

They allow a certain amount of limited development in the future, so couple of homes, agricultural buildings, recreational structures, but overall they're designed to keep the land mostly open and prevent intense development or subdivision of the land.

And that's in order to protect the property's unique values.

So because we're statewide, we protect a lot of different types of land.

So that could be historic, like the property behind me with this old building.

It could be recreation land like Shelby Farms.

Working farms, a lot of those in West Tennessee, obviously.

So we really work on a lot of different landscapes across the state using that conservation easement tool.

- Why is this work so important long term for Tennessee and for our citizens?

- Sure, I mean, there's tons of benefits.

Obviously one would be economic.

I think people come to Tennessee because it's beautiful.

They come to recreate, they come for the historic tourism.

You know, people love to drive those back roads and experience those historic places.

I think people come here for outdoor recreation.

We have some of the best places to hunt and fish and boat, and in some parts of the state rock climb.

I know that's not as popular in Memphis, but... And so huge draw for our tourism is to keep Tennessee beautiful.

But obviously also a huge pillar of our economy is also agriculture and forestry, so keeping those farms and those forests and working family farms is important for that.

And then obviously just the less tangible benefits of all of us love the beauty of Tennessee.

Gives us a sense of place, it helps it not look just like everywhere else, keeps that character that we all love about Tennessee.

And then, yes, keeps that land available for the future generations to have and enjoy as well, as we do today, so.

- How can we as the public help the Land Trust for Tennessee?

- Well, we are a nonprofit organization, and we do depend on philanthropy to run our mission.

And the biggest part of our annual budget is actually our people.

We do, sure, sometimes do special fundraisers to acquire a piece of land or work on a project, but really it's to pay our professional staff to do this work all the time, day in, day out.

So we would love financial support.

That is the way we sustain our annual operations.

And then of course, we would love, if you own a piece of land and are interested in exploring options for that, we have hundreds of confidential conversations with people who are just thinking through the future of their property.

So we always also, people can use us as a resource for that, or for a friend who may own an important piece of land.

So we're available to help that way as well.

- Well, talk about where we can go to find more information to get involved with the Land Trust for Tennessee.

- Sure, so our website is landtrusttn.org.

We're also on Instagram and Facebook, and our phone number is easy to remember.

[chuckles] It's 615-244-LAND, or 5263 since a lot of us don't have the keypads anymore.

But 244-5263 if you ever wanted to call our office, so.

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

Thank you for coming on the show.

- All right, thanks for having me.

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

The 2023 Corporate Award for 100 employees or fewer went to Campfire Collective.

[bright piano music] - Campfire Collective is a Memphis-based marketing firm that seeks to ignite creativity with community-focused organizations.

So we believe in uplifting communities through our work with those small businesses and nonprofits and community-based organizations.

So our focus in our community service is to empower those future female leaders of tomorrow, specifically within Memphis.

We launched our Carrying the Torch program this year in January of 2023, and that is our official community impact program as an organization, and it's our vision and our plan on how we chose to give back to the Memphis community and DeNeuville Learning Center for Women was a huge piece of that.

DeNeuville Learning Center for Women is a nonprofit here in town that focuses on giving educational services to those women in need.

So whether it's ESL, GED, citizenship test, whatever it is, they provide the classes to help those women get those certifications.

And the coolest thing about them, which is why I'm on the board, is because they also do it with free childcare.

So as we know, childcare is one of the biggest boundaries when it comes to women elevating their career.

DeNeuville seeks to remove that barrier.

We have been doing a lot of work with Restore Corps for many years.

So even before Carrying the Torch launched, we provided pro bono marketing services for them for over a decade.

With Junior Achievement of Memphis and the Mid-South, it all goes back to, you know, empowering those future leaders.

So we participate in their bowl-a-thon.

We were able to raise a lot of money this year.

And I have to brag on one of my team members, Ariana, who went above and beyond.

We kind of created a little internal team competition for fundraising, and she posted on her social media that she would wear a shark onesie and bowl in it at bowl-a-thon if she reached a certain amount of money, and I think she ended up raising double [chuckling] what she had committed to.

So she did.

She bowled in a shark onesie all Saturday.

So that's the type of fun environment we have when it comes to volunteerism at Campfire Collective.

By creating this Carrying the Torch program and helping our team see the importance of this, I no longer think that it's all on my shoulders, essentially.

I do have my part.

I serve on boards, I donate my time, we donate pro bono services, but giving our team a way to give back too just increases the amount that we're able to commit to, you know, making Memphis a better place.

When it comes to volunteerism, it really is in our mission and at the core of what we do at Campfire Collective.

So knowing that my team is just as invested in giving back to the community as I am, it really shows that we're all on the same track and we all have the same line of thinking.

[inspiring music] - They're a nonprofit repairing donated vehicles and providing them to families in need.

We're talking about MidSouth Hope Garage, and we're here with the Community Director and Co-Founder, Joanna Murray.

And let's start.

What led you and your husband and some friends to launch MidSouth Hope Garage?

- It was a dream that started over 10 years ago.

My husband Ben and our friend Jeremy both learned mechanical skills from their dads and from their granddads, and they always had this hope of being able to use that skillset to give back and to help the community in some way.

We just weren't quite sure what that looked like.

And so after kind of mulling the idea for the last decade and just talking over numerous dinners, and, you know, just trying to dream big, MidSouth Hope Garage was officially created in March of 2020.

- And so talk about how it works, because you have the donated vehicles, an army of volunteers that help make repairs and restoration.

So walk us through how it works.

- I do love that you said an army of volunteers, because nothing could be truer.

[chuckles] Yes, so we are a 501(c)(3), and so people are able to donate their vehicles to us for a tax deduction.

We then make all necessary repairs on those vehicles to get them back safe and running on the road.

And then we have partnered with referral partners across the greater Mid-South area to find our applicants, and then we give those cars to them free of charge.

- Talk about how the volunteers plug in, because there's a specific timeframe involved on your end.

- That's right.

So we have once a month volunteer days.

What that looks like, we rely heavily on our volunteers.

We are a very small ministry.

There's four of us.

Like you said earlier, it's myself, my husband, and our friends Jeremy and Ashley Brummer.

We all have other full-time jobs, and so we are stretched pretty thin, but it's a privilege to be stretched thin to be able to do this.

And so we rely heavily on our volunteers to come in.

We have mechanics that offer their time, which is so valuable for us, selfless of them, but so valuable for us to be able to rely on them to be able to get these cars back out to the community.

We also have people that can't work on a car, but they can clean a car, and so we have, and that looks like kids to adults, whoever wants to come.

We appreciate them vacuuming, detailing.

We want these cars to be as pristine, you know, just in as clean as possible for their recipient.

We want them to be proud of the car that they're given.

And then we also have volunteers that provide breakfast.

We like to feed our volunteers well so that they feel appreciated, 'cause we greatly appreciate them so for their work and their time that they're giving to us, and so we do have volunteers come in and provide breakfast for everybody as well.

- What type of vehicles can be donated?

- Any vehicle.

[chuckling] I would say the only stipulations that we have are age, and we can't take a 40-year vehicle.

It just isn't feasible to work on it at this point.

And we can't take anything major like an engine problem, something that would require thousands of dollars in repairs.

We do have a set limit that we try to stay to for each repair.

It's about $500 per car.

And so we're able to do a lot, because our labor is free, and so that $500 truly is just parts.

And so anything that's under that parameter, we are happy to tackle and take on.

- What does it mean for the families to be able to have reliable transportation?

Because you're talking about independence, being able to make it to work and back home.

So what does this blessing mean for the family?

- You know, a lot of who we serve have struggled being independent in life, and if they were independent, there were some unhealthy underlying ties still in relationships, addictions, family ties, and so a car, we like to say the car isn't the end-all-be-all to their concerns and issues in life that they've been facing, however, it is a big piece of the puzzle.

Memphis is not set up to be a mass transit community.

We do have a bus system, but it doesn't reach all of the areas that our recipients live in, and so they really are reliant on family, friends.

You know, Uber isn't a feasible thing when you make minimum wage.

And so we've had some that have lost their jobs because they couldn't afford to take an Uber.

They'd already, you know, that costs more than they made for the day.

Or, you know, even when we have to meet somebody to give them the title, that can even be, we see the challenge play out there, because they have to rely on somebody to find that ride to us.

You know, it's not a rare occurrence that they're two to three hours late to our meeting time.

And it's no fault of their own, it's just that they're at everybody else's mercy.

And with a car, you know, we hope to negate that, that they're able to manage their own life and be independent, you know, and maintain job security because they are able to get to job, maintain their children's welfare and getting them to school and doctor's appointments.

And, you know, all the things that we all take for granted, you know, a lot of our recipients, they weren't born into that environment where that's just a norm that you get a car when you turn 16.

And so I think it's the beginning to break a lot of unhealthy cycles and being able to have that independence with a car.

- Well, where do we go to get involved to learn more about MidSouth Hope Garage?

- Yes.

Follow us on social media.

We are on Facebook and Instagram, so you can just search MidSouth Hope Garage and it will pop up.

You can visit our website at midsouthhopegarage.org.

You can email me joanna@midsouthhopegarage.org, and we would love to hear from you.

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

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

[upbeat music] - The importance of collaboration and the power of collective efforts in creating positive change for our community are front and center with this month's episode, themed research, conservation and restoration.

As we saw, Slingshot Memphis is collaborating with MDRC for MemWorks, to identify the root causes of employment roadblocks for Memphians experiencing poverty, so evidence-based solutions can be created and implemented to enable pathways to economic mobility.

Collaboration is also key for the Land Trust for Tennessee as they work with landowners, partners, and communities to protect our land and natural resources from both present and future generations.

And collaboration drives MidSouth Hope Garage, as they receive donated vehicles, repair and restore them with help from volunteers, and then provide them to families in need so the families have reliable transportation to accelerate forward.

It takes research to better understand the issues and come up with more effective solutions.

It takes conservation to safeguard our resources for a sustainable future, and it takes restoration to take things that are broken and make them a blessing for someone in need.

In all cases, we're a stronger community because of research, conservation, and restoration.

So where can you plug in 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 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 sp onsor of The Spark.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]