Overview
Each year, the Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) brings more than 10,000 attendees to cities across the United States. The Brewers Association is committed to ensuring that the craft brewing community is a force for good in the cities we visit by spearheading a Community Engagement Project in conjunction with the Craft Brewers Conference. These projects provide an opportunity for the craft brewing community to engage and learn from the communities we visit while coming together to meet urgent needs in local populations.
About the 2023 Project
This year, the Brewers Association is partnering with the Community Resource Center to combat housing insecurity by providing personal and household hygiene kits to middle Tennessee communities in need. Housing insecurity can include a variety of challenges including:
- Lack of access to affordable housing.
- Lack of access to safe and stable housing.
- Being cost-burdened (30%+ of income spent on housing).
- Experiencing frequent moves.
- Experiencing homelessness.
This issue hits close to home for the hospitality industries. Front line hospitality workers—who are commonly categorized as ALICE (asset-limited, income-constrained, yet employed)—disproportionately experience housing insecurity, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, subpopulations like veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, and Black and Hispanic households, disproportionately suffer from the negative effects of housing insecurity.
This CBC Community Engagement Project has been designed under the guidance of the Community Resource Center to assist individuals, children, and families in Nashville and beyond who are experiencing housing insecurity. CBC attendees will assemble kits that will help CBC to ensure that grade school students are able attend to school every day feeling clean, confident, and ready to learn; that unhoused residents of Middle Tennessee have access to critical non-food basic needs to stay clean and safe in the summer months; that people who menstruate have consistent access to basic period supplies; and that working families do not have to choose between paying for rent, food, or essential household items.
The Community Resource Center (CRC) is Middle Tennessee’s only large-scale Hygiene Hub, working to remove barriers to basic hygiene for our neighbors in need. The CRC partners with over 100 nonprofits and nine school districts across seven counties in Middle TN to distribute more than 1.5 million hygiene and household essentials to our neighbors each year.
Attendees at the 2023 Craft Brewers Conference are invited to help assemble personal and household hygiene kits…
| Hygiene HERO Kits | 6,500 K-12 students in Middle Tennessee are experiencing homelessness, meaning they are without stable housing throughout the school year. Many of these students live in week-to-week hotels or “couch hop” between family and friends. Homelessness in Nashville disproportionately impacts students of color (67% of 6,500), particularly as historically Black neighborhoods in Nashville gentrify at rapid rates. |
| Summer Hygiene Kit | More than 20,000 individuals in Middle Tennessee are unhoused, living on the streets, in and out of emergency shelters, or in encampments. Middle Tennessee summers can be dangerous for our unhoused neighbors, due to high temperatures and humidity. |
| Period Care Kits | 1 in 4 people who menstruate struggle to afford period products in the United States, accounting for more than 120,000 individuals in Middle Tennessee. 1 in 5 students who menstruate will miss at least one day of school each year because they can’t afford this basic need. Period care products are not covered by SNAP or WIC. |
| Family Cleaning Kits | 1 in 3 (35%) Middle Tennessee households with at least one adult working full-time, year-round cannot afford their “basic needs budget” (food, hygiene, rent, childcare, transportation, etc.). And the economic situation is even more dire for working Black and Hispanic families, more than 75% of whom cannot afford the basics in Middle Tennessee. With these inequities in mind, the CRC intentionally partners with organizations and schools in the 37208* and 32711** zip codes. |
*About 37208: 37208, a zip code within “North Nashville”, represents a population of 19,546 individuals in Davidson County, 61% of whom identify as Black. More than 48 percent of individuals in this zip code are under the age of 30, with 61 percent of children under the age of 18 living in poverty within this community. This community’s median household income is only$35,633, with 29.3% of its residents living below the federal poverty line. According to a 2019 study by the Brookings Institute, this zip code in North Nashville has the highest incarceration rate in the entire country, with 14 percent, or one in every three young men, experiencing incarceration.
**About 37211: 37211, a zip code within “South Nashville”, is the third most populated zip code in the state of Tennessee, representing a population of 75,073 individuals in Davidson County. Of those 75,073 individuals, 42% self-identify as Hispanic or Latino persons. The median household income for this zip code is only $32,497. Nearly 55% of individuals living in this community self-identify as an immigrant or refugee to the United States. More than 62% of households in 37211 have at least one adult working full-time in the hospitality industry.
Use your down time to lift someone up! Come meet with members of the Community Resource Center and the Brewers Association Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, as together we assemble personal and household hygiene kits for members of the Middle Tennessee community who are experiencing housing insecurity.
Who: You — and grab some friends!
What: Hygiene kits for housing-insecure individuals, children, and families
Where: Exhibit Hall A Prefunction
When:
- Monday 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
- Tuesday 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
- Wednesday 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
You can grow the size and impact this project by making a tax-deductible financial contribution to the Community Resource Center that will directly cover the cost of supplies.
Donations up to $2,500
https://crcmidtn.org/cb2023/
Be a Community Champion by donating over $2,500.
Please Contact J Jackson-Beckham, Brewers Association, Equity and Inclusion Partner for more information.
Last year, the Brewers Association partnered with the Greater Twin Cities United Way to address food insecurity among immigrant and refugee populations by assembling nearly 3,000 culturally specific pantry packs. The Twin Cities region is home to many cultures with a variety of meaningful foods, flavors, and spices. Because it is important that households experiencing food insecurity have access to foods that are familiar and significant to their culture, attendees assembled pantry packs that contained staples from Latino/-a, Southeast Asian, and Afghan cuisine. Community leaders from the United Way were on hand to speak to the attendees about the project and Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the United Way, Scottie Carter, delivered the keynote for the 2022 THRIVE Workshop. Minneapolis conference attendees showed tremendous heart and enthusiasm, completing the planned three-day service project in on the first day of the conference.
Thank you to our community champions!
