Parent advocacy group Memphis Lift broke ground on a new facility last week designed to not only serve more parents but also provide them with more assistance.
“I got your back!” said Memphis Lift members as they celebrated.
The new facility will be named the Brenda Rogers Resource Center, after a longtime community advocate and mentor to Memphis Lift Executive Director Sarah Carpenter. It will provide resources such as a food pantry, computer lab, uniform closet, and area for educational programs.
“When this thing came about, we came to this place to look at this building. We were looking for a place, we were at the Kroc Center and we called it the Spaceship. It was so small we were sitting on top of each other, we didn’t have nowhere to work,” said Sarah Carpenter. “We came over here and I knew this was the place we needed to reside because we were right here in the community, where parents would feel safe coming, and we don’t just serve parents in this community. We serve them all over the city.”
Last year philanthropist and novelist Mackenzie Scott awarded Memphis Lift a $1.5 million grant to open the resource center that will be added onto the current headquarters in North Memphis, bringing an additional 3,200 square feet of space.
Memphis Lift members and Memphis community members celebrated the groundbreaking by telling their experiences with Carpenter and the work she’s done for the community.
“I remember when these orange shirts were just an idea. And what’s the most powerful thing about Sarah and the Memphis Lift is that it’s a reminder that whether we’re philanthropy, whether we’re business, whether we’re government, we may not always have the tools and we may not always have it all the way right, but when we have really good ideas, this is what you can turn into,” said a member of the Memphis Education Fund.
The Memphis Lift is a movement founded by Carpenter and a group of Memphis parents in June 2015 with a goal to give parents and grandparents a place to advocate for their children.
Since then, the organization has organized a parent task force to help with the Memphis-Shelby County Schools superintendent search, created special education advocacy team, and provided informational workshops that cover Individualized Education Programs (IEP) and basic rights parents have.
