Mission Partners

MISSION STATEMENT

Empowering families experiencing homelessness to achieve sustainable independence through a community-based experience.

VISION STATEMENT

Eliminate homelessness for all children and families in East Bell County.

HISTORY AND THE WORK

In 2004, Family Promise of East Bell County was founded in Temple to provide help to homeless families across Bell County. Family Promise grew to include a network of 13 local congregations which provided guests with food and shelter every night of the year. The City of Temple provided a decommissioned fire station at Ave. A and 22nd to serve as the Family Promise Day Center for case management and life skills training, as well as a place where families could shower and do laundry.


In 2020, a new model emerged. With nearly two decades of serving families through the core program, the Board of Directors began to explore how Family Promise’s services could expand, both in number and value. After visiting a nearby Family Promise affiliate and learning about how others around the country have changed their practice with families, the Board of Directors decided to plan for a shift in the work model. This new approach centers around a new central site facility.

When COVID-19 hit, the shelter in place order required that the families in the program stay in a single locations. Additionally, churches were also not able to safely allow families to stay overnight in a rotational model. Currently, families are staying in the Day Center and at a house temporarily provided by one a partner church. While church volunteers still provide meals for the families in the program every night of the year, the model of work has already shifted somewhat to a single site model. Through this change, the children and parents get much more sleep and have less scheduling and logistical challenges. They no longer have to awake at 5:30 every morning to be driven back and forth each day from a church to the Day Center and have more stability in their lives while in the program.


While the new central site facility is in the coming future for Family Promise, the staff and volunteers continue to serve families with the core overnight program as well as other programs like financial literacy, homelessness prevention, and after care support, which includes a year of follow-up case management. The new central site model will allow staff and volunteers to serve twice as many children and families per year, while providing an even higher level of work. With this anticipated capacity and added work to get to the next level, the Board of Directors hired Rucker Preston to serve as the new Executive Director in the fall of 2020.