It Takes a Community

Neighborhood Cooperative Ministries shows how local nonprofits work together to better the lives of at-risk families.

A few years ago, Neighborhood Cooperative Ministries (NCM) acquired a complex to further the mission of helping neighbors who sincerely want to break their cycle of poverty and regain financial independence. To remind the community of its expanded facilities and partnerships with other nonprofits, NCM invited the community to an event called Tacos + Tours.

Stakeholders were informed about ways they could continue their support while munching on tantalizing Latin cuisine. Afterwards, guests were shown the improvements and processes NCM has devised to help those in need.

Ryan Jones, director of community development, kicked off things by explaining why he retired from his career in banking to begin the journey of helping improve the lives of people who were hungry, homeless, jobless and lacking some of life’s basic necessities.

“I realized today that it’s my two-year anniversary here,” he said. “The man is in the room who, kind of, led me on the journey to retire as a banker.” 

He motioned to Randy Redner, who had been the president of the Community Foundation at the time and now is working at Rainbow Village.

“One of the things that stood out to me as I was doing my discernment and making my career change was ‘where could I make the most impact?’” said Jones.

He shared statistics about the pockets of poverty in the community. Then the various partners talked about how they work together to improve the lives of at-risk families in Gwinnett County.

Community helping community

“We’re now a county of more than a million people. We expect to have another 500,000 in the next 20 years,” said Jones. “The poverty rate has doubled, and the vast majority of that poverty is right here in our surrounding area.”

According to the United Way’s child well-being index, 45% of southwest Gwinnett’s children are living below the poverty line. That adds up to more than 11,000 kids.

Lack of affordable housing is also a big issue in this area. “A lot of times, we have families that are living in extended stay hotels and paying more money to live there than I pay for my house,” said Jones. “What these families are facing, a lot of times, is a cycle of poverty. They’re forced to make choices between their basic needs. ‘Am I going to feed my kids healthy food or am I going to pay for transportation to get to work? Am I going to pay for my medical bills?’”

Jones added that this cycle of poverty creates low grades in school, high unemployment rates and many other negative effects.

Even though the area boasts some of the toniest homes, high incomes and high levels of education, there are pockets of poverty similar to those near Clarkson, where refugees are given solace, or west of Mercedes Benz Stadium, where homelessness and addiction are high.

Better Work Gwinnett

Luisa Beeco, a program manager for Better Work Gwinnett, part of the Georgia Center for Opportunity, (GCO) explained that GCO focuses on family work and education.

“Our goal is removing barriers, and we do it in many ways so that every person, no matter their race, past mistakes or the circumstances of their birth, can have access to quality education, fulfilling work and a healthy family life,” she said. “We have people who are working on research and policy and working on trying to keep families together.”

One way to keep families together is by making sure the adults have jobs. That’s where the Better Work program comes in.

“It’s not like a staffing agency — it’s different,” she said. “I would call it a referral program.”

Better Work has partnered with multiple employers in the area that have agreed to reach out to job candidates within 3 business days for an interview or a conversation to be able to go through their process.

“We have people go through our portal. It takes five minutes. They can do it on their phone,” said Becco. 

Once the applicant signs up, Better Work has a 30- to 60-minute conversation to understand where they fit in the work world. They assess the barriers to work — transportation, childcare, etc. Instead of creating more programs, Better Work connects clients to existing resources such GED classes and English language classes.

Next Generation Focus

Rachel Mannino, a recent UGA grad, is one of the after-school program directors of Next Generation Focus, a nonprofit afterschool program that meets Monday through Thursday, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Norcross First United Methodist Church.

“We also have locations at Discovery High School and Summerour Middle School, and we also meet virtually,” she said. “We provide out of school tutoring for our youngest scholars. That provides year-round academic support, enrichment activities, character education and life skills development for under-resourced and vulnerable youth and their families.”

She explained that since its inception, the mission has been to provide high quality educational and developmental opportunities to impact underserved communities. Students from kindergarten through 12th grade receive assistance in all subjects, including English language classes. There are even English language classes for parents.

Rainbow Village

Rainbow Village is the largest transitional housing nonprofit in Gwinnett County. It was founded by Christ Church in 1991 and used to be a bunch of scattered homes. It is now a 2.5 acre campus in Duluth.

“We can handle 30 homeless families at a time. Those families can stay with us for up to two years. We are not a quick fix program,” said Redner. “This is not a rapid rehousing program, because that just keeps rehousing them again and again. That doesn’t really help families.”

Redner explained that Rainbow Village is working to expanding so it can help more than 30 families at a time. “We have over 2,000 homeless kids in our school system,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’re working hard to expand.”

He said that when he was the CEO of the Community Foundation, he saw that there are six great cooperative ministries across the county that were created 30 years ago by very future thinking leaders.

“When you add all those cooperative ministries together, we see 100,000 people a year; 10% of our population will go through our cooperative ministry,” Redner said. 

Rainbow Village sees a 90% success rate in helping families break the cycle of poverty. So, the charities started a pilot program in January where one or two social workers were embedded at other nonprofit organizations.

“We’re working side by side to take a look at that and learn how nonprofits can work closer together,” said Redner.

The NCM tour

Intake at NCM begins in the front lobby where clients are screened to make sure they are eligible for services.  “Here they tell a little bit of their story, their background, a little bit of what’s going on,” said Jenny Ortega of NCM. 

After being processed, they meet with caseworkers. “Once they come back to us, the options include clothing, food, hotel, rent and utilities,” added Ortega.

The complex also has space for those who just need a little extra help, such as once-a-month food distribution to stretch the grocery budget or clothes for back to school or job interviews, as well as assistance with utilities or finding work.

“We talk to them about all the various different ministries that we have here,” said Ortega. “It’s not just financial; there are also spiritual ministries,” she said.

And there are English classes and healthcare sessions where clients can get blood pressure checks and talk to someone about medical assistance and/or prescriptions assistance.

During COVID, NCM offered a drive-through pantry, but now clients can enter the expanded food facility with more space for cold and frozen foods. Healthy snacks are offered during tutoring sessions.

The changes at NCM are focused on helping families become independent and stand on their own. With the newly formed partnerships, all involved pray that the years ahead see more at-risk families becoming stable and able to give back to the organizations so they can help other families.

By the numbers

11,018 children face hunger in NCM’s service area.

256 individuals were served by NCM in 2022.

336,439 pounds of food was distributed by NCM in 2022.

41 families were served by Rainbow Village in 2022.

274 individuals were connected to jobs and services by Better Work Gwinnett in 2022.

450 to 500 students are served virtually and in person by Next Generation Focus.

28% of Norcross residents spend more than half of their income for rent.

119 billion pounds of food are wasted in the U.S. each year.