Ford is opening a new community center in rural Tennessee. It's changing how corporations give back
The schoolhouse is being transformed into the new Ford Community Center for the city of Stanton, population 415, which sits closest to the edge of BlueOval City. Located 50 miles outside of Memphis, Stanton is a predominantly Black community built on former plantation land. Once the heart of the community, the schoolhouse was decommissioned after desegregation. Now through an unusually community-centric process, the building is being converted into a resource center that provides residents with job training, financial literacy, healthcare access, legal services, and more.
'It's a front door for helping people who wish to participate in the rising tide of BlueOval City,' says Josh McManus. His consultancy, M|B|P, spearheaded this community-focused approach, which involved more than 2,500 hours of community meetings and input sessions to understand what was needed before any investment was made.
'What you find very fast is there are a lot of lifelong residents in the area who, because there's been next to no economic activity there for a long time, are in need of hard skills and soft skills,' McManus says.
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