the CRUX Center - a modern solution to ending poverty

It was in 1964 that President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “war on poverty.” And it’s been more than 50 years since Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed trying to raise the quality of life for the poorest among us. And yet, according to the Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet, as of September 2018, Memphis has a poverty rate of 24.6 percent and a child poverty of 39 percent. Unless something drastically changes, this is a war that we are nowhere close to winning.

Friends and fellow citizens, something is about to drastically change. And it starts with how we fight this war -- and how we will actually win it. As with most wars, it’s about land -- who controls it, the resources it holds and/or what can be produced on it. But what happens when land that was once ignored, unproductive and blighted becomes hyper-efficient, ultra-productive and a high-performing asset to the community? We change the battlefield. We change the economic prospects of our communities.

And we've already started. We recently purchased a 4000sqft building with 1.2ac of farming land! The land has been prepared for planting, the seedling are ready to go out and the fall seeds are waiting to be directly sowed. What we need is help getting our roof repaired.

The building is made of cendar blocks and have no damage. The utilities are on and the commercial kitchen and bathrooms are in working order... we just need some roof repairs and the community will have an extra resource.

Once we have the cash in hand, here's what happens next:

• We call the roofer to begin the repairs
• Once the repairs are completed (2 weeks) we will have an open house.

We believe that if we truly want to defeat society's ills -- poverty, blight, a depressed tax base, joblessness, low-performing schools, and more -- it will require a different mindset, a different strategy, a different approach. That starts with this notion that poverty can't be defeated. Balderdash! If humans can figure out how to destroy all life on Earth many times over, we certainly can see to it that everyone is fed. It's not a question of resources; it's a question of WILL. Do we have the WILL to defeat poverty and blight? Do we have the WILL to embrace abundance?

But because poverty is a mindset, you can't just defeat it with resources. You have to defeat the MINDSET itself, and you can't do that while coming from a place of scarcity and limited resources. The way you defeat poverty is with ABUNDANCE.

In our vision, The CRUX Center is the local base of operations for a community to gather, learn, inform, and/or have their needs met. It is there to improve an individual’s daily life, the community overall health. It’s also the headquarters for that community’s staging ground for ending the war and defeating poverty at a hyper-local level.

We sense that there's tremendous energy in Memphis around the idea of uplifting its citizens. We will use the very principles of abundance that we grow food by to change the mindset of poverty to one of ABUNDANCE... and you're invited to join us!