More for Memphis initiative aims to create radical change

A middle school and improved financial education are among the improvement’s residents in Memphis’ Orange Mound community say are desperately needed to improve the area’s challenges with racial inequity and generation poverty.Those suggestions came Wednesday evening during a community forum in Orange Mound for the More for Memphis initiative.Organizations Seeding Success and the Community Foundation of Memphis started More for Memphis in 2019 with the goal of radically changing Memphis by investing in six key areas: community development, education & youth, economic development, health & well-being, justice & safety, and culture.“The plan is to make a more equitable Memphis.  How can we improve outcomes for folks that look like us, for everybody in Memphis that is barred from access to whatever that may be,” said Melody Freeman, Seeding Success Director of Collaborative Action.  “We can actually do some things. We can actually make some sustainable change.”Freeman says More for Memphis will complete its planning phase in September, which will include input from community members like those in Orange Mound.One of the largest needs, according to residents, is improved educational offerings like more after-school care options and more schools.One parent told leaders of More for Memphis, the community lacks quality schools, especially one that serves middle school children.“The thing that we really need in the Orange Mound community is a middle school. It is ridiculous that our children have two elementary schools,” said the resident. “Those kids have to leave when they go to middle school and nine times out of ten, they not coming back (for) high school because they got amalgamated to the schools where they are.”Other community members talked about needed changes for what children learn.  One community member said one key change that would help Orange Mound is improved financial literacy.“Everybody is learning how to manage money and build wealth and so forth except us. But everybody is living off us,” said the resident. “So, it’s time that we get into our systems, our schools, our meetings, you know you could have a class here because there are plenty of adults here that don’t know anything about investing. And that has been withheld from us.”Other big changes residents say are needed include more accessible transportation and assistance for the area’s homeless.“We’ve got so much empty property that this place, it can be nice for the elderly and it can be a place where people jump off and can start owning their own homes,” said the resident.The More for Memphis initiative will be formally introduced to the public during the initiative’s launch party scheduled for September 27.