About
A startup with a very old idea.
We exist to empower individuals and communities to rise above poverty by building resources necessary to life.
Executive Director
Ernie Jones
Ernie is from here. Tullahoma High School, class of 1978, then the University of Tennessee, where he played wide receiver on the 1979 football team. He holds an undergraduate degree and a master’s.
He has been a pastor and he has run a business, and he has volunteered with several nonprofits along the way. These days he also coaches girls basketball.
Which is a long way of saying he is not running Tullahoma Bridges from an office somewhere else. He is running it from the town he grew up in, for people he is going to run into at the grocery store.
Where this came from
Started in 2021. One family at a time, on purpose.
Tullahoma Bridges is a startup organization, and we say that plainly. We began in 2021 with the goal of changing the living conditions of people in our area one person or one family at a time.
The framework is Bridges Out of Poverty, which is used by communities all over the country. What makes it work here is not the curriculum. It is that the room is full of people from Coffee County, and the person running it is somebody they already know.
We do this alongside partners who were already at it: the food ministry that feeds families, the clinic that treats people without insurance, and the church that gives us a room every Monday night.
Partners
- First Church of the Nazarene
Contact
Come by, call, or write. All three work.
The office
First Church of the Nazarene201 S Polk St
Tullahoma, TN 37388
Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Get directions