Community Organizations
Children and Youth Guidance
Big Brothers/Big Sisters
Big Brothers Big Sisters matches children ages 5 through 18 with mentors in professionally supported one-to-one relationships.
Boys & Girls Clubs
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis (BGCM) is all about creating opportunities for children through after-school education.
Porter-Leath Children's Center
Porter-Leath helps more than 10,000 low-income children and families annually with programs designed to meet their developmental, health and social needs at the earliest opportunity.
Church Related Ministries
Streets Ministry
Streets is a Christian ministry dedicated to serving the youth of Memphis. Streets has been serving the students of the 38126 zip code—the third poorest in the nation—since 1987, and recently, Streets announced an expansion site in the Graham Heights community. Serve as an after-school tutor and mentor for youth in an urban ministry setting.
Young Life
The Young Life program starts with adults who are concerned enough about kids to go to them, on their turf and in their culture, building bridges of authentic friendship.
Crisis Service and Special Needs
Aloysius Home—Friends for Life
Aloysius Home is the housing division of Friends For Life. It was founded in 1992 as a place for persons with HIV/AIDS who had nowhere to go.
Dismas House
The mission of Dismas House is to facilitate the reconciliation of former prisoners to society, and society to former prisoners, through development of a supportive community. Prepare and serve evening meals, or help with GED and literacy with persons recently paroled and now living in this transitional support community.
Friends for Life Corporation
The purpose of Friends For Life Corporation is to help persons affected by HIV/AIDS live well through a comprehensive, client-centered approach that includes education, housing, food, transportation and healthy life skills training. Provide AIDS information and support services, or help prepare meals for semi-monthly gatherings.
Hope House
Hope House is the only facility in the State of Tennessee designed to meet the unique needs of HIV Affected Children. Assist children who are HIV affected or effected.
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s leading sexual and reproductive health care provider and advocate.
Youth Villages
Youth Villages is a private nonprofit organization that provides a fully integrated continuum of counseling services and programs designed to help children with emotional and behavioral problems overcome their challenges and live successfully with their families.
YWCA Abused Women's Services
The YWCA of Greater Memphis Abused Women's Services (YWCA-AWS) is dedicated to eradicating domestic violence by providing dedicated and optimal services, empowering women to make educated decisions about their lives and educating the community on the effects of domestic violence. Assist with a 24 hour crisis line, women's emergency shelter, support services, and women's resource center.
Disabilities and Independent Living
Memphis Center for Independent Living (MCIL)
The Memphis Center for Independent Living works so that people with disabilities in the Memphis area may live independently. Help with advocacy programs, special events and services for persons with disabilities.
Shelby Residential and Vocational Services (SRVS)
Shelby Residential and Vocational Services (SRVS) is an organization that supports children and adults with disabilities. SRVS is the largest provider of comprehensive services to people with disabilities such as mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and autism in Tennessee.
Skinner Development Center
Skinner Development Center assists in therapeutic recreation for people with disabilities: basketball, volleyball, weightlifting, indoor swimming, Special Olympics, and after-school activities.
Hospital and Health Care
Caritas Village
Provides Compassion Neighborhood Clinic, a free medical clinic of all-volunteer staff, every Tuesday night 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm. Doctors and nurses treat minor adult and childhood illnesses, help find doctors to treat chronic illnesses, and provide health education.
Website: http://www.caritasvillage.org/
Christ Community Health Services
Since opening the first health center in 1995, the Christ Community Health Services' mission has been to provide high quality healthcare to the underserved in the context of distinctively Christian service. They strategically enter Memphis communities that, over time, have become deficient in resources and services. Residents of these communities lack access to quality healthcare and often manageable health issues go untreated or undiagnosed. Through God’s calling, Christ Community is standing in the gap, delivering quality healthcare and spiritual healing.
Church Health Center
The Church Health Center provides healthcare for the working uninsured and promotes healthy bodies and spirits for all. Assist with programs in health care for the working poor, including fitness, medical treatment, and health education in a church-based health center.
Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital is a leader in pediatric clinical care and research, and is a premier teaching hospital for future pediatricians, pediatric surgical specialists and clinicians. Volunteer in the hospital's child life center, visitation, ER, physical therapy, or assist in the special care infant unit.
Ronald McDonald House
The Ronald McDonald House program provides a “home-away-from-home” for families so they can stay close by their hospitalized child at little or no cost.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Give support and companionship to very sick children and families at St. Jude, or at the nearby Ronald McDonald House where families reside while in treatment.
Literacy and Education
Literacy Mid-South
The Memphis Literacy Council and Mid South Reads joined forces and have merged into a new organization, Literacy Mid-South. Literacy Mid-South welcomes the Academy Tutoring Project – a volunteer program that recruits and trains community volunteers to tutor children in five innovative charter schools in Memphis.
Shelby County Schools
The mission of Shelby County Schools’ Office of Volunteer Services is to establish partnerships with parents and community organizations, including private, public, non-profit, civic and faith-based groups, to support the district’s primary goal of academic achievement. Just a few ways to volunteer at Memphis City Schools include becoming a tutor/mentor, assisting with special school events, speak to students about career goals, assist in school labs or vocational classes, and more.
WYPL Talking Library
The WYPL Talking Library reads news and other printed information on the library's public radio station, intended for the visually impaired.
Hunger and Homeless
Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis, a nonprofit ecumenical Christian housing ministry, is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing in the city of Memphis and surrounding areas, and to making decent housing for all people a matter of conscience and action.
Memphis Family Shelter
Memphis Family Shelter provides transitional housing and supportive services for homeless mothers and their children.
Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA)
MIFA serves more than 55,000 individuals annually and engages the community to sustain the independence of seniors, transform the lives of families in crisis, and equip teens for success.
MIFA Meals on Wheels
The MIFA Meals on Wheels program, with the help of up to 100 volunteers, provides 1,800 hot, nutritious lunches for homebound elderly and seniors at 26 congregate sites each weekday. MIFA’s largest program has been awarded the highest possible accreditation conferred by the Meals on Wheels Association of America.
Legal and Environmental Opportunities
CASA Court Appointed Advocates
Court Appointed Special Advocates represent abused, neglected children whose placement is being determined by the court. Work with Juvenile Court officials for the welfare of children.
Mid-South Peace & Justice Center
The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center is a community based organization that works to educate, organize, and mobilize communities to realize social justice through nonviolent action. Assist with community education, research on human rights, peacemaking, and environmental issues.
Wolf River Conservancy
The Wolf River Conservancy is a non-profit land trust that works to conserve and enhance the Wolf River corridor and watershed as a sustainable natural resource. Work with local leaders and a grassroots organization to preserve and protect the ecology of the Wolf River.