The city should set aside a fund to support Memphis youth that will ensure that the level of investment will not waver with each election.

Before he was a homecoming queen, Brandon Allen was an activist who spoke out against bullying, promoted suicide prevention, and participated in Bridge Builders and his school's LGBTQ Alliance. His work and identity have made some uncomfortable; nonconforming leaders often afflict the comfortable.

'I have seen my share of city-specific TV dramas, and I know that the first, most important rule is to slip local phrases, landmarks, traditions, etc., into the regular dialogue seamlessly.'

The mission of The Gentlemen’s League is to intervene in the lives of at-risk boys. It offers monthly workshops that cover topics such as financial literacy, dressing for success and character development.

In healing ourselves of outdated judgments, we overthrow the history that once made it natural to discredit and disrespect us: mothers, daughters, sisters, co-workers and entrepreneurs.

The U.S. Naval Academy instills every midshipman with a sense of accountability to each other. The Shelby County Schools would benefit if children were encouraged to work together as a goal-oriented team.

In our day-to-day lives, we may feel we could never devote the time or the energy to change the world like Gandhi and King did. But there is much we can do. To begin with, we can change ourselves.

'Until we get serious about rebuilding our police and fire departments and fixing our retention problem, we will never be able to proactively attack the issue of crime.'

'A bad day in Memphis became a great day because I had joined a community of people who care for each other. My community happens to be the Sea Isle Runners.'

'A sales tax increase (would) return our pension and healthcare benefits to a plan that only five years ago found Memphis on the precipice of fiscal ruin.'

Getting out of our respective silos, laying aside our egos, and working together with urgency, our PSP Memphis Team has built up our own capacity to fight crime by using Department of Justice expertise and resources.

Outdoor assets in Memphis create one of the most impressive networks in our region, adding value to both locals and visitors.

With news that nearly two-thirds of Tennessee's public school third graders are not proficient in reading or math, researchers report that the combination of Voluntary Pre-K and quality K-3 is a way to improve academic outcomes. 

Randall Mullins and Sharon Pavelda founded a project to identify and memorialize lynching sites in Shelby County, and helped create a community of supporters, from the National Park Service to the local NAACP, preachers and politicians, activists and academics.

Like the character of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's novels, people are a mix of goodness and baseness. A lack of self-awareness can result in "blithe disregard for genuine grievances."

Between 2010 and 2015, Memphis was the fourth fastest growing city for millennials. There's no better place in the United States to grow than Memphis, and right now there's no place growing quite like it.

Many of the people who help with butterfly counts are knowledgeable about birds, dragonflies, amphibians and plants. But if you’ve got eyes and can ask, “What’s that?” you can be a valuable participant. The next count is Sept. 7 at Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park. 

Memphis has seen its own types of gerrymandering and the political opportunism that undergirds those efforts.

MATA needs a silver buckshot strategy that incorporates a lot of different innovative approaches – including buses on heavily traveled routes and on-demand transportation in low-density areas.

Next fall, thousands of Memphis children will qualify to participate in the new Education Savings Accounts (ESA) Program. They can receive about $7,300 in the account, which can be used for tuition at private schools, tutoring, textbooks, school uniforms and computers.

If MATA is committed to providing first-class transportation for the residents of Westwood and Boxtown, it should consider a plan recently proposed by retired bus driver Lonnie Britton to run buses through both neighborhoods every 30 minutes so riders can get to the Downtown bus terminals in 30 minutes.

In Tennessee, more than 70,000 citizen children live with an undocumented family member. If a large-scale immigration raid occurred in our neighborhoods, it would have ramifications among the nearly 14,000 Latino/Latina children attending Shelby County Schools. 

A basketball league, an all-male mentorship program and 'restorative conversations' when students make mistakes are part of the Bruce Elementary principal's philosophy of education. 

If you were asked for a thoughtful vision statement that could become the guiding light for our entire city, what would it be? 

'Many of us have been taught that volunteerism and philanthropy should be completely selfless. I would argue that volunteering needs to be positive for the organization AND for the volunteer.'