Twenty years ago, Rev. Clayton Lewis, former pastor of Munger Place United Methodist Church, saw a child digging in a Dumpster for food. He began handing out food and clothing to neighborhood families from his office, and as more people came for help, volunteers from the church took it from there.
Eventually, the Wilkinson Center was born. And it will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary of service with a luncheon honoring its many supporters over the years.
Both our neighborhood and the center have changed significantly in the past two decades. The center, now an independent non-profit organization, still services area families in need. But its goal is to do so by helping patrons move out of poverty and into long-term self-sufficiency.
“We started primarily helping with hunger,” says Carreen Carson, director of administration and development for the center. “But our focus has now changed more to meeting basic needs of people in trouble and helping them make long-term improvements in their lives.”
Still, the center’s food pantry is its most widely used program. Almost 18,000 people per year get food from the pantry on a monthly basis. Carson says approximately 30 percent of the food pantry’s clients are homeless. That’s why they offer specialized food targeted for homeless patrons, such as easy-open cans, Pop Tarts and edibles that don’t require can openers or heating up.
The center also offers an employment program, assisting with job leads and job training for about 2,000 people per year. But Carson says the center is revamping the way it does things, hoping to better match its goals to its clients.
“Now when we get people jobs, the contact stops,” she says. “So many times, they wouldn’t stay. They’d get their first paycheck and have more money than they’d ever had before, and they’d quit. We’d see the same people again a few weeks later, still living day to day.”
With the new program, Carson says, the center will maintain contact with patrons for two years and offer support groups to help them break old habits.
“We’ll have fewer people in the new program, but we expect it to be much more effective long-term,” she says.
Carson says the center makes its biggest impact through area kids. Safe Haven, its after-school program, offers tutoring and recreational activities to kids ages 9-14.
“We have SMU students tutor them, take field trips, offer art classes along with drama and music,” Carson says. “It’s a variety of activities meant to expose them to new things and help them succeed in life.”
The center has 30 kids in the program, attending every day after school and all day during the summer.
“It’s really incredible to see the effect we can have on them,” Carson says. “All our kids passed the TAAS last year, and we had six get straight As. And one got into the talented and gifted program.
“When you take a kid from making Cs to As, and get them seriously thinking about going to college for the first time, it’s really amazing. One of our girls told us she’d never be able to go to college. She just never saw herself doing that. Now she’s preparing to take her SATs. I start to cry every time I talk about that.”
For information about the Wilkinson Center, call 214-821-6380.
