Knoxify

On the spur of the moment, I decided to attend the Vet­er­ans Day pro­gram at the Ten­nessee Vet­er­ans Ceme­tery this year. Although I drive by the solemn rows of tomb­stones every day, I’d never ven­tured up the hill to the octag­o­nal struc­ture at the top. This year, in the wake of the Fort Hood mas­sacre, I felt moved to do so. I wanted to honor our vet­er­ans in a per­sonal way. My dad, a Korean War vet­eran, went with me to the ser­vice hosted by the Ten­nessee Chap­ter of the State Guard Asso­ci­a­tion of the United States. Nei­ther of us knew what to expect.

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If you haven’t yet tried jAVERDE cof­fee yet, I promise you you’re miss­ing out!

Brewed locally in Pow­ell, jAVERDE has a ton of fla­vors to sat­isfy any cof­fee lover’s taste-buds. With names like CocoJo, Mahalo Mocha, Shell Shock, Blar­ney Moo, Dream­sip­ple, Munky Chow, Johnny Zap­ple­seed, Jav-O-Lantern, Straw­dairy Sur­prise, and many more, you can be sure you’re not going to find this vari­ety any­where else! And for those of you who just like a nor­mal cup-o-joe, jAVERDE has your more basic blends too!

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The fine folks over at Ten­nessee Blog­gers For Edu­ca­tion have been ask­ing us to spread the word about their pro­gram for a while. And what a great pro­gram it is. Head on over to their dona­tion page and look at all the ways we can help local teachers.

As part of a world­wide move­ment that offers neu­tral human­i­tar­ian care to the vic­tims of war, the Knoxville chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Red Cross dis­tin­guishes itself by also aid­ing vic­tims of dev­as­tat­ing nat­ural dis­as­ters. Today, in addi­tion to domes­tic dis­as­ter relief, the Amer­i­can Red Cross offers com­pas­sion­ate ser­vices in five other areas: com­mu­nity ser­vices that help the needy; sup­port and com­fort for mil­i­tary mem­bers and their fam­i­lies; edu­ca­tional pro­grams that pro­mote health and safety; and inter­na­tional relief and devel­op­ment programs.

Dona­tions from this month’s First Fri­day Five will sup­port local dis­as­ter relief, mil­i­tary pro­grams, CPR/First Aid train­ing, and youth health and edu­ca­tion pro­grams in area schools and day­cares. Go here to make your small dona­tion of $5.00.

For more infor­ma­tion, call 865 – 584-2999 or visit knoxarc.org.

Photo by: Michael Hodge

First Fri­day Five is our online giv­ing project that pro­files one local non-profit orga­ni­za­tion each month. Put your $5 to work.

If you live in Knoxville or plan to visit the area on Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 10, I encour­age you all to check out Knoxville Twes­t­i­val!

Knoxville Twes­t­i­val is part of a char­i­ta­ble event tak­ing place in com­mu­ni­ties all around the world. Twes­t­i­val uses the power of the local Twit­ter­verse to encour­age com­mu­nity mem­bers to come out in per­son to a fun event to be held at the Knoxville Zoo on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2009 from 7-10pm, and to donate money to a des­ig­nated local char­ity: The Sal­va­tion Army of Knoxville.

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The Sal­va­tion Army has been meet­ing phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual needs with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion in the Knoxville area since 1899. Most peo­ple know them for the bells and red ket­tles at Christ­mas time, but most are unaware of the his­tory or the extent of their pro­grams and services.

The Thomp­son Cen­ter of Hope, The Sal­va­tion Army’s home on Broad­way, actu­ally houses five shel­ter pro­grams in addi­tion to the church facil­i­ties, com­mu­nity cen­ter and admin­is­tra­tive offices. There are two res­i­den­tial pro­grams for men, two for women, includ­ing the Joy Baker Cen­ter for vic­tims of domes­tic vio­lence, and the Shafer Fam­ily Cen­ter, Knoxville’s only emer­gency fam­ily shel­ter. Each of the res­i­den­tial pro­grams requires res­i­dents to have jobs, share in chores and work with case man­agers towards a more per­ma­nent hous­ing solution.

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The Helen Ross McN­abb Cen­ter has served numer­ous needs in the Knoxville com­mu­nity since 1948. Cur­rent ser­vices include men­tal health care for adults, addic­tion and recov­ery pro­grams and fos­ter care services.

Recently, The Helen Ross McN­abb Cen­ter announced a fund-raising drive to con­struct 32 home­less and spe­cial needs hous­ing units in Knoxville as a part of May­ors Haslam and Ragsdale’s “Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Home­less­ness.” Often, men­tally ill home­less men and women have very few options avail­able to obtain safe, per­ma­nent, afford­able hous­ing. The Helen Ross McN­abb Center’s “Hous­ing 1st” plan will build one bedroom/efficiency apart­ments with each build­ing hav­ing a com­mon area for ten­ants to meet with sup­port ser­vices per­son­nel. Hav­ing men­tal health ser­vices inte­grated into the Hous­ing First model will allow for greater suc­cess assim­i­lat­ing into the community.

Dig deep and help the McN­abb cen­ter meet their goal buy giv­ing just $5.00. Please? If you can click here to make your dona­tion electronically.

First Fri­day Five is our online giv­ing project that pro­files one local non-profit orga­ni­za­tion each month. Put your $5 to work.

The Adop­tion Foun­da­tion of Ten­nessee, Inc. was founded to assist fam­i­lies in wel­com­ing home chil­dren through adop­tion, one step at a time. Literally.

The steps they take: The Adop­tion Foun­da­tion of Ten­nessee, Inc. recruits walk­ers and run­ners to par­tic­i­pate in foot races, in an effort to raise adop­tion aware­ness and money for adop­tive families.

They sup­port adop­tive fam­i­lies: They help an adop­tive fam­ily raise money within their own resources, cre­ate strate­gies to gen­er­ate resources and pro­vide direct finan­cial sup­port to make their adop­tion dreams a reality.

To learn more about adop­tion and to donate $5 as part of Knoxify’s First Fri­day Five, visit The Adop­tion Foun­da­tion of Ten­nessee, Inc.‘s Web site and click “donate” on the bot­tom of the page. We greatly appre­ci­ate your help.

First Fri­day Five is our online giv­ing project that pro­files one local non-profit orga­ni­za­tion each month. Put your $5 to work.

I’d been hear­ing rave reviews about the new Rem­edy Cof­fee since it opened just a few weeks ago…and finally I man­aged to make my way down there last week. I must say, this place is awesome!

It has the Down­town Knoxville cof­fee shop feel that I love, with big comfy leather couches, exposed brick walls, giant win­dows, and an upstairs loft for small meet­ings and study groups (make sure you take advan­tage of the free WiFi). And the best part — the chai latte and the pump­kin muf­fin I ordered were delicious!

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Our apolo­gies for the delay in get­ting this posted. Our fear­less leader, aka CP, suf­fered a brain fart last Friday.

The Restora­tion House of East Ten­nessee jour­neys along­side low-income sin­gle mother fam­i­lies through­out Knoxville as they work to achieve the goals and dreams they have for their fam­ily. Through long-term hous­ing, team men­tor­ing, and fam­ily ser­vices, they focus on rela­tion­ships, build­ing a robust sup­port sys­tem around the fam­i­lies by pro­vid­ing a foun­da­tion that helps them become phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally, socially, spir­i­tu­ally, and finan­cially strong.

The fam­i­lies of The Restora­tion House are work­ing hard over the two years they are with us to change not only their “todays” but their futures as well.

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