Through volunteer-driven home repair efforts across Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, Martha Pierce, Executive Director of Mountain T.O.P., knows firsthand how housing improvements can change lives. Her organization’s home-improvement efforts have even gone so far as to help a mother maintain custody of her child and allow people the mobility support they need to safely leave move around their homes again.
“When you have a safe, healthy home, the overall health of the county becomes better—financially and environmentally,” she says.
Mountain T.O.P’s work not only keeps people safe and housed, but it supports the next generation, particularly young women, to learn skilled trades and leadership. “If investors will invest in these folks and our gifts and abilities,” Martha adds, “we can transform lives throughout Tennessee and throughout Appalachia.”