Fighting the Pipeline: Nonprofit activist finds power with POWHR

Here on Buzz4Good we often feature the nonprofit's mission. But today we focus as much on the life story – and world view – of one particular person who works for a nonprofit, Crystal Mello, a community organizer for Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights or POWHR, which has been one of the most influential opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Buzz4Good creator Michael Hemphill's conversation with Crystal highlights POWHR's fight against MVP, which got national attention this week as a controversial addition to the federal debt-ceiling bill that got passed by Congress. But just as interestingly, we share Crystal's personal and inspiring path: single mom at 16 years old, her child’s father incarcerated for drugs, survivor of a sexual assault, house-cleaner by trade, and now one of our region’s most passionate and influential community organizers.It’s a wide-ranging conversation about Crystal’s own surprising journey to community activist and organizer, and an exploration of her worldview that sees the forces responsible for projects like MVP as the same as those that oversee our courts and prison system, climate change, the banking system, drug addiction, and on and on. Are you a nonprofit with an event that we could help promote? Or a marketing problem we could help fix? Contact us and we’ll share on an upcoming episode.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FOLLOW US:F A C E B O O K ➜ http://facebook.com/buzz4good​​I N S T A G R A M ➜ http://instagram.com/buzz4good​​L I N K E D I N ➜ https://www.linkedin.com/company/buzz4goodY O U T U B E ➜ http://youtube.com/c/buzz4goodW E B S I T E ➜ http://buzz4good.com​​- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The United States has more than 1.5 million nonprofits — from homeless shelters, food banks and rescue squads to children’s choirs, science museums and animal refuges — that employ one out of every 10 Americans. Like any company, nonprofits have salaries and bills to pay, a budget to balance. They require money. And if enough people don’t know about them, don’t believe in them, don’t support them — in short, if they lack BUZZ — they suffer and die.