Christ Church Cathedral

The Beacon is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established by Christ Church Cathedral. Our mission is to provide services that restore dignity, self-respect and hope to Houston’s poor and homeless. Our success is driven through our four core programs: The Beacon Day Center, Cathedral Clinic at The Beacon, Brigid's Hope at The Beacon, and Beacon Law. These four programs come together under one roof to provide meals, showers, laundry service, case management, medical and psychiatric care, pro bono legal services and pastoral care.

http://www.beaconhomeless.org/

CUSE provides opportunities to serve persons who are being denied justice, peace, and dignity by their community. Our location at Christ Church Cathedral in the center of downtown Houston provides the perfect home base for groups of youth and adults wishing to experience the unique challenges and blessings of inner-city service.

http://www.urbanserviceexperience.org/

@CUSEHOUSTON Instagram, Twitter & Facebook.

Kids Hope USA is a national mentoring program. Its mission is to build caring relationships, one-to-one. Its method is to partner one church with one public school. Each participating church hires a part-time director who is trained by the national organization to train and supervise volunteer mentors. Each mentor develops a caring relationship with one at-risk child.

Volunteers are carefully vetted, including a police background check, an interview with the director, and approval by the dean of the Cathedral. The Episcopal Diocese of Texas requires that they also complete the Safeguarding God’s Children training.

Rusk School

Christ Church Cathedral is partnered with Rusk School, located at 2805 Garrow St., just a short distance east of the Cathedral. Rusk is a magnet school for science and technology and covers grades pre-kindergarten through eighth. Ninety-five percent of the students are Hispanic. Children are recommended for the program by their teachers or by a member of the school administration. Parental permission must be received before they can be given a mentor. The KHUSA director interviews each child, then mentor-mentee matches are made.

Prayer Partners

Each mentor-mentee relationship has a volunteer prayer partner who prays for the success of the relationship. Ideally, the prayer partner and mentor stay in contact on a regular basis so the prayer partner can stay apprised of how things are going for child and mentor. A prayer partner can be an invaluable support to the mentor. Kids Hope USA mentors must avoid any suggestion of proselytizing, lest by law the program not be allowed in public schools. A mentor carries the love of God personally to the child through the relationship and a prayer partner does behind-the-scenes work of praying for the needs of mentor and child.

Mentors

Mentors meet with their kids individually for one hour a week, on campus, throughout the school year. Each mentor must volunteer for one school year, though many mentors decide to stay with her or his child for two or more years.

The child’s teacher and the mentor coordinate the day and time for the meeting to occur each week. Because uncertainty is the norm for most of these children, the mentor’s faithfulness to the weekly visit is imperative. Through this faithful, caring relationship, the child learns to trust. If the mentor is unable on occasion to keep the visit, she or he must notify the director, preferably in advance, and make arrangements for a substitute mentor for that visit. Another option is to reschedule the visit for later in the week. In the case of out of town travel, the mentor must inform her or his student in advance of the travel dates so the child will know when to expect the mentor to return.

Your Impact

These children are at-risk by virtue of living in poverty. They are trapped at the lowest levels of human development, at the levels of survival and belonging. It just takes one caring adult in the life of such a child to spark not only a vision for a better life but the hope to achieve it. Studies have shown that one caring adult spending a mere one hour a week with an at-risk child actually enables that child to access higher functions of her or his brain and thus begin to learn. Steven Gutierrez, former principal at Rusk School, wrote his doctoral thesis on mentoring, based on the KHUSA model at Rusk. He found that kids who were mentored demonstrated a higher rate of improvement on testing than the control group of non-mentored kids.

The reward is not measured by testing alone, however. A caring relationship changes everything, for the child as well as the mentor. Usually the change is obvious and you see your student grow happier and more confident as your relationship develops. Visiting your student becomes a highlight of your week.

Sacred Ground is dialogue series on race, grounded in faith.  Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race, racism, and whiteness while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. The 10-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.

Sacred Ground is a resource coming out of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society.  This series is especially designed to help white people talk with other white people, while being open to all racial/ethnic groups.  Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love.