David Jordan, CEO and President of Agape Child and Family Services discusses the good things being done in fragile areas of our community by advocating for the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of children and families, and maintain a special commitment to serving under-served and/or disenfranchised populations.
Since our founding in 1970, Agape has grown from a staff of 2 to nearly 100 team members and 2,000 volunteers. Those who have known us for decades know us as an organization whose roots include a longtime affiliation with the Churches of Christ and a focus on foster care and adoption services.
We need help with education for our kids. We’re in all 16 schools, K to 12 that our kids attend from the three three communities, Frazier, Whitehaven, Hickory Hill that we work in. Taking a multi generational approach, this collaborative piece is very important. We have a hundred or more collaborators, organizations that do mentoring, organizations that are involved in childcare organizations are focused on transportation, on housing. Agape is kind of a quarterback, if you will, walking alongside our families. Our staff actually are called connectors. We connect relationally and we connect by wrapping services around, and so we’re holistically focusing on the family and all the matters going on the family, and then having collaborative partners work with us and alignment what most meets the family’s needs.
We’ve also, had our families say, I need more of a job. Almost 50% of our families and our parents work, they’re just under employed. You literally cannot get out of poverty unless you’re making at least $15 an hour or more. So that’s one of our goals is to just get 20% of our adults to that place. Again, in our last quarter report, which came out just a couple of weeks ago, 38% of our adults, we’re at $15 an hour or more.
From a job perspective and workforce development we think as bad as COVID-19 is, this is giving us an opportunity to go even deeper with our families with some tools that maybe they’ve not had before. The goal is to get 500 computer devices out to our families with connectivity, with training and be able to use it in this kind of way, because now over 200 of our families have lost income. Over $400,000 has been raised just for some of these immediate needs for our families right now.
Because we’re wanting to honor social distancing at this time, volunteer by sharing the news, getting the word out, letting people know about us and what we do. You can also give financially, Agape money is going directly to the families around food and immediate needs.
Learn More: https://agapemeanslove.org/
