The HOPE Center is a nonprofit, community-based organization. Incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 2004, we have served low-income and unemployed families in Fort Worth and Dallas since 2002. We provide food, educational programs and medical referrals assistance, and we build collaborative relationships with job training and placement organizations for adults and their families in an effort to improve their overall quality of life.
We have more than 400 volunteers logging over 23,000 hours annually. We have expanded our volunteer base through having corporate volunteers come in and work as part of team building exercise.
We provide:
- Food, clothing, and household items for individuals living at or below poverty level through our Food Pantry and Resource Center
- Educational programs
- Youth programs
- Job training
- Job placement
- Dental exams
The needs of the youth are best exemplified by statistical data gathered from the school district where most of the youth live and attend public school. In a recent report, which examined six middle schools, roughly 85% of the combined student population are minority (African American, Latino, Asian), 60% are considered economically disadvantaged, 35% have limited English proficiency, 70% qualify for free of reduced lunch and less than 50% receive passing scores on state mandated tests. This statistical data is also indicative of the parents of the children of these same children. These figures must be improved in order for these students and their parents to receive academic and social success and break the cycle of poverty.
Our School of HOPE program is for low-income adults and children from low-income families. Adults learn basic computer, office, and job-hunting skills, and take classes to prepare for passing the GED. Our education and computer programs are facilitated by means of 30 donated desktop computers from BNSF Railway and 3 servers from SMU that provides LAN and Internet access from our computer classroom. Students learn how to prepare their résumé and online job applications. They learn Keyboarding 101 and become proficient with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint).
We have received an additional 75 donated computers that we have distributed to two other nonprofit organizations needing computers for their programs, and we also reward our students with a computer at no cost to them when they graduate from our program. 65 students attended the last two semesters. We are accumulating more computers from corporations who are upgrading their computers so we can put them in the homes of our students after they graduate from The School of HOPE.
The community we serve has a high school drop out rate of over 50%, and the GED program is a must for our students to get into vocational schools. The HOPE Center partners with three vocational schools that send us potential students who apply to their school but don’t have their high school diploma or GED. They send those students to us for GED training, and then they go back to those schools to enter vocational programs.
Our collaborative relationships include United Way of America (FEMA), Tarrant Area Food Bank, Feed the Children, Battered Women’s Foundation, GRACE, Central Dallas Ministries, Abundant Life Ministries, and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
The HOPE Center works with Texas Workforce Solutions and is employing teenagers through their summer work program. We also have partnering ministries in more than 100 churches in Fort Worth and Dallas.
