Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program FY 1999 Grantee

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT CHATTANOOGA, CHATTANOOGA, TN -- $399,919

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga will receive a Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program New Grant for $399,919 to work with the City and 18 community organizations in the Martin Luther King (MLK) neighborhood. The MLK area, which is the last united black business district in the State of Tennessee, was once a prosperous commercial and residential neighborhood, but is now plagued by deteriorating housing, high rates of substance abuse and crime, low levels of educational attainment, and high unemployment. But the neighborhood also has a rich and proud heritage that the University and its partners will seek to promote.

Among the activities Tennessee Chattanooga will undertake are:

• Empowering neighborhood residents with the tools to develop and implement their own community revitalization efforts through organized clean-up projects, a community-based public arts project, and development of training modules in grassroots organizing;

• Helping residents set up Individual Development Accounts to encourage savings, including matching savings on a 2:1 basis;

• Using sports programs as a way to keep youth away from drugs, including having the University's athletes serve as mentors and providing recreational activities for neighborhood youth.

• Developing and maintaining a clearinghouse on affordable and reputable child care providers;

• Creating a "Saturday University" for adult education to teach basic principles of science and math through hands-on experience with practical problems.

Contact: Lindsay Pardue, 423-755-4431

Content Archived: January 20, 2009