the president's quarterly letter
 April 24, 2007

 

Dear Friend of the Urban League:

 

The past few months have been very busy times for your Knoxville Area Urban League. One of the things we have been thinking about is how to stay in touch with you on a regular basis to let you know what we are doing and also, to encourage conversation with you on how we can better serve our community. To that end, I plan to write our friends a quarterly letter to let you know what we are doing and planning to do at the Urban League.

 

Quite often I am asked “I have heard of the Urban League, but what is that you guys do?”  In a word, as our tagline says we are about “Empowering Communities and Changing Lives”. Our mission is to empower African-Americans and others throughout the East Tennessee area in securing economic self-reliance, social equality and civil rights. Our services are offered to anyone who might benefit by what we do. The Urban League aims to be the catalyst for this change through advocacy, coalition building, delivering services, and by promoting communication and understanding among different races and cultures. We realize this strategy by pursuing action in the following areas:

·         Economic empowerment

·         Educational and youth services

·         Meeting families’ basic needs

·         Civil rights and social justice

·         Building a sustainable organization

 

In particular, we offer programs to help people purchase their first homes, improve their credit history and credit scores, find entry level jobs; we have a number of programs to assist school age children gain the knowledge and skills they need to get ahead; and we provide assistance to people who want to start or expand existing businesses.

 

Most of you have now heard that the Urban League is managing the Empowerment Zone (EZ) Small Business Loan Program for the city.  This program provides a tremendous opportunity to create wealth in the empowerment zone by the support it will provide to businesses in the EZ which need financing and technical support. The EZ is a 16 square mile area in the central city.

 

The loan program fits very nicely with the long term strategy of the Urban League to promote economic development in the community we serve. This month we continued with our economic empowerment strategy by sponsoring the Investing for Success workshop in partnership with National Urban League and the Investment Company Institute Education Foundation on Thursday, April 26.  Over 250 individuals attended the education seminar which was designed to inspire individuals to become more knowledgeable about investing and to take advantage of opportunities to accumulate wealth. 

 

 

Other topics included investment goals, understanding risk and reward, being an informed investor, planning for college and saving for retirement. Later this spring we will offer a series of classes on wealth building: a course on personal finance, a course on investing, and a course on entrepreneurship and small business management. As you can see, we are taking our economic empowerment agenda very seriously.

 

Our Housing and Community Development Programs promote decent housing, suitable living environments, and expands economic opportunities to low-and moderate-income people through workshops, group counseling, and individualized counseling sessions.  Since January, 114 individuals have been served; provided 36 referrals to other supportive services; prepared 5 Forbearance Plans; assisted in 6 Home Equity Conversion Mortgages for seniors; and helped 8 first-time home buyers meet qualification requirements for loans.

 

The Urban League operates with a fully committed and engaged board of Directors.   Elected at the January meeting, our officers for 2007 are:  chairman – Dennis Upton; chair-elect – Annette Winston; treasurer – Frank Rothermel, and secretary – Gwendolyn Brown.

At our annual membership luncheon held in February, six new board members were elected:  Tom Catani, US Cellular; Russell Byrd, Comcast; Bryan Stubblefield, First TN; Carlos Hayes, UPS; Sylvia Peters, community volunteer; and Debi Welch, News Sentinel.   Attendance for the annual meeting doubled from 2006.  Corporate membership awards were presented to Allstate, Clayton Homes, Denark, Enterprise, Rural/Metro, State Farm, U.S. Cellular and DOE for Silver. Gold members are Denso, Enterprise, First TN, News-Sentinel, KUB, TVA and Visionary Solutions. And our Platinum members are Pilot and Scripps Networks.

 

Your membership in the Knoxville Area Urban League is also very important to us and this community; it shows the support of individuals for the work that we do. An annual membership costs $25 (you can always donate more) and is tax deductible. We hope you will consider a membership.  Please return in the enclosed envelope.

 

So—what’s ahead. In cooperation with SunTrust Bank, we will sponsor our third networking reception for Young Professionals at the SunTrust Financial Center, 9950 Kingston Pike on May 10th.  And on October 18th at the Knoxville Convention Center, we will hold our 29th annual Equal Opportunity Awards Gala.   You’ll hear more about these and other events in the coming weeks.

In closing, the Urban League appreciates your continuing support, and you can look forward to hearing from me again next quarter.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Phyllis Y. Nichols

President & CEO

 

Enc.