- This month on The SPARK, our theme is "Working to Create Economic Prosperity".

We'll learn more about a nonprofit guiding those in need towards stability and sustainability through compassionate Christ-centered ministries and empowerment programs.

A nonprofit social enterprise, helping women survivors thrive, and a group of visionary civic-minded executives, committed to moving Memphis forward.

We'll also share a special moment from our SPARK Awards 2022.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb & 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 & Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The SPARK.

- (male announcer) Ad ditional 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 Meritan.

- 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 nonprofit guiding those in need towards stability and sustainability.

We're here with the President and CEO of Neighborhood Christian Centers, Incorporated, our good friend Ephie Johnson.

And so Ephie, let's start out 45 years in terms of a big anniversary.

So give us a little background for Neighborhood Christian Centers, Incorporated.

- Well, you know, thank you so much for having me, Jeremy.

We are so excited about 45 years, I can't believe it.

I've witnessed all 45 and before that my parents, Monroe and JoAnn Ballard began to do the work that they have done in the community alongside our family.

Even before they were in Memphis, they were just inspired to always help people.

They came from modest backgrounds.

My mother was given away before she was a year old with two other siblings.

My father couldn't read until he was in the sixth grade, and so, I'm sorry, he couldn't read in the sixth grade.

So he couldn't read for a while.

And then he eventually gained that ability and just always believed that children, young people, need the opportunity to have education, a career, something that they could do to earn a living have their own, living made and be sustaining.

And my mother was the same way.

She looked through the lens of those that were disenfranchised, that were disconnected from the community under-resourced.

And because of what she had happened to her and her life, she wanted to help people about her grandparents, what I call my grandparents, her parents that adopted her, raised her.

And so that is how Neighborhood Christian Centers, got its start is just by the work out of their heart to the community.

Turning into something more formalized in 1978, which is Neighborhood Christian Center.

- Give us some background on the programs.

Let's go ahead and start diving in.

- We have initiatives that are in three different pillar, three areas of our organization.

One is adults, the other is youth.

And then we have our compassionate services.

So our compassionate services programs is basically how we began our work and why we continue to do what we do that keeps us relational.

We serve people in need through maslowian needs, food, clothing, sometimes monetary assistance.

We do initiatives where people can pick, we call client choice, which we do still pass out boxes to people and sometimes have to prepare things that people ask for.

But as much as we can, we try to help people to come in and you pick what you'd like to get from our closed closet.

You pick from our food source that we have.

And this creates dignity and in stills trust and relationship.

And then with our youth program, we have access to about 1500 to 2000 young people that are in our sphere of influence every day in our 13 locations.

And so our work with youth stems from our early childhood kids with our learning with lunch, our reading programs, our intensive programs to our middle school programs called SOAR, where we introduce and help kids work through some of the challenges that they have, maybe in the communities they live with gun violence, intervention, helping children to think about where they could be as a first generation college graduate or first generation career path contributing citizen.

And so that's the type of work we do every day with our afterschool programs.

We take them on excursions, we take them on college trips, we do dual enrollment programs, all types of things to be the village to these young people that many times are orphaned or their parents or fathers are in prison.

So there's so many people that we're serving that are in this category, and we choose to serve those that are in most need, those in the most dire chronic situations, those that cannot get a ride, those that have to have somebody pick them up and bring them to the programs.

So this is where we thrive and this is where we work.

In our adult programs, we're focusing on the parents as well as folks that are wanting to get back out into the workforce, maybe have worked only a few months at a time and then they kind of stop and they restart.

So we have a life coaching and workforce training program that's called Holey Cakes.

And Holey Cakes allows us to creatively use baking therapy, if you will.

So our participants can get in the kitchen, learn about baking a cake, but we're actually having conversations and observing them and seeing how do they work?

What are the challenges they're having?

Are they coming to work on time?

Do they get frustrated because everything wasn't set right or something has changed?

And so all these different things affect how we respond to the people that we serve their needs.

And it's a social enterprise.

So this also helps us to pay the people that are part of the program.

You buy a cake for $25, a significant percentage about two thirds of that goes toward that person's hour of work.

And you start off with a nine day program and then they can go to cross training and all that kind of stuff.

So we're very excited about that.

And you can order a cake and that would be very helpful to the work we do.

- Obviously, us buying the cakes.

So Holey Cakes, that's an easy way for the community to support your efforts, but how else can the community support your efforts?

- Well, you know, we're celebrating our 45th year and we have the sponsor packets that are ready to roll.

So if you come to email me at ephiej@ncclife.org or you go to our website and find us, you can ask, say, "Hey, I wanna be a sponsor for your 45th year."

And no amount is too small and none of is too great.

But we do have sponsor packets that give those levels.

So we'd love to have people help us with that.

Transportation is a big issue.

When we can get people where they need to be, it does a lot of things, but number one, it helps them to get on a bus, get where they need to go and not have to beg, borrow and owe somebody, so they can get a ride somewhere and it's not reliable every day.

And then we're helping young people to stay off the streets, extended periods of time and creatively have ways to engage them, so that they can redirect their thinking and have something to look forward each day.

- Wrap up with website where we can go to learn more to get involved with Neighborhood Christian Centers.

- So to get involved, you can go to www.ncclife.org and you can go through the list, a menu of opportunities there from volunteering, to giving, to pickups.

We pick up, we have a truck that goes around and picks up items for people that are donating, like furniture or clothes.

It has to be downstairs, it has to be in the garage or the front, but we can go through and pick those up for you free of charge.

We do not pick up things that do not work, and we do not pick up things that are dirty or things like that.

We just can't handle that.

But if there's something that you can give that we can share with a neighbor that needs it, that's what we do every day and we'd love for you to be a part of that.

- Well, Ephie love and appreciate everything you and your amazing team are doing.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Well, shout out to our awesome team all through the city.

It's because of them that we do what we do every day.

And we love you and all that you do, Jeremy, thank you so much.

[gentle music] - They're a nonprofit social enterprise, helping women survivors thrive.

We're here with the CEO of Thistle & Bee, Autumn Chastain, and let's start out, give us a little bit of backstory, a little context for Thistle & Bee.

- Sure.

Thistle & Bee is a two year residential program for women survivors of trafficking and addiction.

We're located here in Memphis and in those two years, we provide all the wraparound services for the individuals to do the inner trauma work while providing medical, dental, educational opportunities and job skill training and work and employment through our social justice enterprise.

- This is modeled after an organization in Nashville, Thistle Farms.

Talk about the model and benchmarking and sharing best practices.

Give us some of that storyline.

- So Thistle Farms is the global example for our sister organizations.

They have 25 years of success with this model, and what we found is that a streets ministry wasn't enough to really break the cycle.

It was more of a bandaid.

So we needed a more robust way to allow the individual to rest, be still, do that inner work, and then have that strength and training to go forth and change some of the decisions and experiences that they might have in the future.

Take those skills back to their families, back to the communities, and really make an impact.

We found that if you tried to do that while they were in the setting, that perhaps was the chaos or was an influence that they weren't able to do that inner work.

And without that opportunity of stillness, there wasn't the long-term change.

- You have an opportunity on the social enterprise side to create some very beautiful and amazing and literally sweet products, including honey.

And so talk about the social enterprise.

- So our social justice enterprise is actually a model of our program.

We maintain beehives and the beehive is really symbolic of what we do in the organization.

Everybody has their different parts.

Everybody has to do each of the jobs assigned to make the hive healthy, whether that's protecting the hive, nourishing the hive, strengthening the hive, going out foraging.

It's just a wonderful model of what our program is.

So our hives are centrally located at Alpha Omega Veteran Services Urban Farm.

So we currently have 38 hives.

Our survivors maintain those with the guidance of Joy, who's our fabulous beekeeper.

We say that she maintains the stinging end of this part and we handle the sweet side, which is harvesting the honey and making the products that we get to share with everybody.

- Talk about kind of how that magic comes together to help these women, regain their independence, but get on the path to thriving.

- It's beautiful.

So many of the survivors, when they come to us, their own identity is blocked from them.

So their sense of worth, their definition of love, their sense of identity, it has been masked for so long that they're rediscovering it.

And you see that through the social justice enterprise.

You see them identify their strengths, you see them identify their interests, and to be able to cultivate that, so that they can take it back into their day-to-day lives is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

But what's even more special about it is we are dealing with a population that has struggles from either previous charges or economic disadvantages, such as housing insecurity, transportation insecurities, things that are really an issue in Memphis, and they're learning to address those and really deal with the struggles of succeeding and thriving despite setbacks or despite barriers.

- Tease us a little bit with some of the items that we can purchase that support Thistle & Bee.

- So our honeys, we have our traditional wildflower, it's a raw, unfiltered honey and Memphis that's fantastic for our allergies and health benefits.

But this year, they introduced a hot Serrano honey and a whipped cinnamon honey that it has proven to be an absolute favorite.

Granolas, we have a premium granola and we have a Love Me Chunky, the Love Me Chunky is more of a dessert granola, and it's inspired by our own Elvis.

Those are probably our most popular items, but we also make soaps and lip balms and other things that can be a product of the honey.

- So obviously items for purchase, events to sponsor and to purchase tickets for to be able to support Thistle & Bee.

How else can the community help your efforts?

- Share the word that we're here.

We are available as a resource for this community.

So the more we talk about and raise awareness of the issue of trafficking and the way it impacts our communities, it's not the white van pulling up at the mall that everyone thinks of from the movies.

It is the grooming that takes place of our teens in the junior highs and high schools.

So having the open discussions and raising awareness that we are here is the easiest way.

It doesn't cost a dime.

Beyond that, we have honey tastings that we can do in-home groups or social groups if they'd like to do 'em.

We'd love to speak to organizations.

We have corporate opportunities with beekeeping for a day events, and just lots of ways you can engage with us.

- Wrap up with contact information, website, social media, where do we go to learn more to get involved with Thistle & Bee?

- So www.thistleandbee.org is our website.

If you'd like to purchase tickets for our honey harvest event, then there's a banner at the top of the page.

You can click and connect there.

Thistle & Bee Enterprises is our Instagram and also our Facebook page.

So please like and support and share.

- Well, Autumn, greatly appreciate everything, you and your amazing team are doing.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you, Jeremy.

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

The 2022 Corporate Award for companies with 101 to 499 employees went to Monogram Foods.

- I am Gary Giles and I am proud to be the Chief Operating Officer at Monogram Foods.

Monogram is one of the country's largest fu ll-service solutions partners that serves the specialty to food and snack industry.

We like to consider ourselves a growth partner that really enables the growth that our customers have.

It's a source of pride, not just for me, but for everybody within Monogram.

It is a part of the way we conduct our business and the way we live our lives.

We care about our community.

And Monogram Loves Kids is an outreach of that where we have raised a little more than $15 million since its inception about 10 years ago.

We have put together some outstanding initiatives to serve the communities where we operate, and we've made it a point to make sure that our people have a big voice in how those funds are deployed.

The Meat Me in Memphis Gala happens every year, just happened this past fall and it's the first time that it's happened on a full scale since COVID.

We had a smaller version of it last spring, but it's an annual event and we're pretty proud of it.

We raised a little over 5, $600,000 and what's more exciting is what we're gonna go do with that 5 or $600,000 to help children and their families in the communities where we operate.

Right here in Memphis, one of the organizations that comes to mind, particularly is the Child Advocacy Center and the Dorothy Day House.

So it's a passion of ours.

We like to raise money for it, and we like to deploy money to work.

I couldn't be prouder of the people that come into Monogram every day and consider it a mission and a privilege to be there.

It's really meaningful, our founder, Karl Schledwitz, he started this company almost 20 years ago, envisioned a legacy of good citizenship.

And it's one that we all try to live out every day.

So the Monogram Loves Kids Foundation is a reflection of that, but it's more than that.

It is just trying to encourage people to be mindful of their neighbors and helpful.

[gentle music] - There are a group of visionary, civic-minded business leaders committed to moving Memphis forward.

We're here with the 2023 Chairman of the Greater Memphis Chamber's Chairman Circle, Michael Scarbrough.

And let's start out 10 year anniversary.

So 10 years.

Give us some background for the Chairman Circle.

- Jeremy, thank you so much for having me today.

And it's an honor to get a chance to talk about all the work of the Chairman Circle.

Celebrate 10 years this year of the work of the Chairman Circle.

It's 175 businesses and business leaders who are focused on really our mission statement, which is how do we build prosperity for all in Memphis?

- You have three prongs, three focus areas.

Go ahead and dive in.

- Yeah, Jeremy, we really have the work of the Chairman Circle working hand-in-hand with the Greater Memphis Chamber is focused on three major areas.

One of those is economic development.

How do we continue to bring new economic opportunity and attract new business to the Mid-South?

Right now, we've got a pipeline of development opportunities that has 62 businesses in that pipeline, 62 projects.

Those projects represent 18,000 jobs and upwards of $18 billion of capital investment.

Great example of that work is things like the recent announcement about Magna International, who's announcing their location to Blue Oval City, bringing 1300 jobs, $790 million of capital investment.

And certainly, those are exactly the kind of projects that we wanna continue to grow and add to the Mid-South ec onomy creating opportunities.

And again, prosperity for many people in Memphis and the greater Memphis area.

- Carry that into the second because when you talk about job creation and opportunities with that, having a skilled workforce is paramount.

- Absolutely.

And so our second major area is workforce development.

And so while there are many players and participants in the workforce development, one of the things that the Chairman Circle, particularly is focused on is this concept of creating a one-stop shop, basically under one roof where a place where people can go to get everything from high school equivalency degree to childcare services while they get skill training, get credentials and very specific skills that are in demand for the kinds of projects in that pipeline.

That's a center that we're looking to bring online early next year.

Again, the Chamber is the lead agency in developing that one-stop shop.

And our goal is to be able to bring through, just through that first center that we're developing, a thousand people a year to be able to grow their skills and leave with a very specific set of credentials that employers will recognize and are in demand and in need in our community.

- The third piece of this is around the business climate and public safety plays a prominent role in that.

So talk about advocacy, talk about work on the business climate.

- Absolutely.

Business climate, as you mentioned, is our third major area of focus.

And while that's a broad set of initiatives.

Right now, one of the biggest areas of the focus and concerns of the business community is the same as most Memphians and that is public safety.

And so one of the things that we've started, and it's led by again members of the Chairman Circle, these are business leaders who are spending their time volunteering their time to focus on a public safety accountability work group.

And this is a kind of two side focus, right?

One is, how do we understand as a business community better, what the different components of our criminal justice system, police, and other members of that community, what are their plans to address public safety and how do we as a business community understand that and hold them accountable to achieving their own plan.

Not, you know, not our plan, but their own plan.

And at the same time asking them what can we do as a business community to help?

And so here's a practical example.

You know, one of the things that the Memphis Police Department has asked for is, would our businesses be willing to interconnect their security cameras to their, you know, their basically crime surveillance center that gives them real-time access to not just the SkyCop cameras or other light cameras, we see around town, but additionally, being able to tap into other cameras that may be around various business campuses that might give them additional views of streets or, you know, nearby parks or other areas to really help them be able to improve the efforts of that real-time crime center.

And so our business members are working with the city to create the kind of data connectivity that gives them access to those cameras.

So again, that's a small thing, but a very practical thing that came out of these types of conversations where we had a chance to hear what they could benefit from the business community and things we could do to help practically.

- So when you look at the collaboration and the impact you're having, what puts a smile on your face?

- When I joined the Chairman Circle as a business a couple years back, we had a, I think 130 members or so.

Today, we are exceeding 175 members and these are small businesses, large businesses, a whole spectrum of businesses across our city that are investing a significant amount of money to be a member of the Chairman Circle.

That money is then invested across those three initiatives that I mentioned.

And they are all giving not just of money, right?

They're not just writing a check.

They're also involved in work groups around each of those three areas.

They're giving of their time, their talent, and their treasure.

And it really demonstrates their commitment to our city, commitment to our region, and again, commitment to that mission st atement that we all agree to.

And that is, we wanna have a tireless pursuit of prosperity for all.

We wanna see crime reduced, quality of living improved, we wanna see poverty alleviated and we think at least the things that we are focused on is at least our lane, if you will, or the things where we should have, you know, some ownership of bringing those things to bear and so.

It puts a smile on my face when I see all those people coming together and working in common cause to make our city a great place.

- Wrap up with contact information.

So where can we learn more about the Greater Memphis Chamber and the Chairman's Circle?

- Please go to our website, memphischamber.com and you can learn all about the Chamber as well as the work of the Chairman Circle there.

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

Thank you for all the members of the Chairman Circle and the Greater Memphis Chamber.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks for having me.

[gentle music] - As we saw in this month's episode, we're fortunate to have organizations in our community that are working to create economic prosperity.

Neighborhood Christian Centers is lifting individuals and families through their compassionate ministries, adult and family services, youth engagement services, and their job training, financial literacy classes and entrepreneurial workshops, which are equipping individuals with the skills and confidence needed to secure sustainable employment and build a brighter future.

Thistle & Bee, a unique social enterprise, empower survivors of human trafficking by providing them with employment opportunities.

Through their innovative business model, they create safe working environments where these courageous women can regain their independence and reclaim their lives.

The Greater Memphis Chamber Chairman's Circle, a prestigious business alliance, is bringing together influential leaders, committed to driving economic growth by fostering collaboration, sharing resources, and advocating for progressive policies.

They're actively shaping the business landscape, attracting investment and nurturing job creation opportunities.

Through these organizations and their collective efforts, they're paving the way for a more prosperous Memphis.

Working to create economic prosperity can be a spark for a brighter future for all of us.

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 that you'll continue joining with us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb & 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 & Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The SPARK.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]