It depends on what the event listener is acting upon.
ItemRenderers are built to work in Lists/DataGrids that will have a collection of objects.
The data object is a reference to that particular item that is selected in a List.
Now that you have moved it to your main index.mxml file, what is the function acting upon? I see you're using a MouseEvent, so I assume a Button click. Where the email source coming from when you click that button?