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GROUPS THAT CHANGE COMMUNITIES

Trinity Ministry to the Poor

Trinity Ministry to the Poor
Pam Schaefer, executive director
Margie Smith, development and volunteer coordinator
134 Oak Lawn Avenue
Dallas, Texas 75207
(214) 653-1711

"We're sort of the last holdout of idealism in Dallas," says Pam Schaefer. "We're small enough, intense enough, passionate enough, and yet we're for real."

Trinity Ministry is not a shelter, but it does just about everything else in a busy, happy melange of soup kitchen, food pantry, clothes closet, job training, medical and psychiatric clinics and family counseling services; and it views all of the services as part of a "holistic" approach aimed at getting homeless people and families back on their feet.

Several of Trinity's programs appear to be exceptional models:

  • The "Client Worker Training Program" resembles a traditional "sheltered workshop," but it serves a different purpose. The center arranges contracts with local businesses for simple, repetitive jobs such as hand-assembled products and packaging. People who come in for job counseling are asked to work for two weeks on these projects in a businesslike setting. This gives the counselors an excellent way to see how people work and what kind of counseling they may need to succeed in the real world of work.

  • Another particularly interesting model project is called the Family Stabilization Program. It's essentially a situation of strongly intensified case management in which a family (selected on the basis of need and rehabilitation potential) is given a full year of intense, supportive assistance in every imaginable area from housing and drug-alcohol counseling to the children's school.

    Four basic goals are emphasized: The program seeks to keep the family together, to get them into decent housing, to find employment for at least one parent, and to keep the kids in school.

  • One more interesting program is called "Positive Play." Saturday mornings, while parents are upstairs learning family budgeting, "life skills" and stress management, the kiddos, most of whom are diagnosed "stimulus deprived," get a busy morning of day care in which art, music and other high-stimulus activities are emphasized.

    All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.
  • Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.
  • Send him E-mail.
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