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North Texas nonprofit expands to help mothers and children overcome poverty and homelessness
A North Texas nonprofit will soon be able to help even more mothers and children find a pathway out of poverty and homelessness.
The Center for Transforming Lives opened a first-of-its-kind facility in southeast Fort Worth on Friday.
CBS News Texas
Every year, the center serves 3,000 women and children through housing support, early childhood education, counseling, and economic mobility services. With the new Riverside campus, the center will expand its capacity to help.
The agency projects a 30% increase in the families they serve in the first year of its opening.
A third of single mothers with a child under five are living in poverty in Tarrant County. In some ZIP codes, that number is as high as 71%.
“And our job is to address those, to get them out of poverty into prosperity, to stabilize, to train, and then help launch them into successfully independent women, children, and families,” said Scott Lydick, president of the board for the Center for Transforming Lives.
Participants will have expanded access to high-quality early childhood education, therapy for both mothers and children, housing supports, and an entire hub of economic opportunity services, including a makerspace, commercial kitchen, and business incubators that support mothers seeking primary or secondary sources of family income.
“I received business coaching, financial coaching, and then was able to save up and get a grant that ended up helping me when I opened my brick and mortar,” said Bermarie Winston, owner and operator of the bakery Blush & Whisk.
The Center for Transforming Lives
She credits the center’s Level Up program for helping her launch the bakery as a single mother with two kids under two years old.
“When someone wants to open a business like that and chase that kind of a dream, there are a lot of potential barriers or challenges that might stop them and keep them from going after that,” Winston said. “And I think a space like this is really helping tear down some of those walls and giving people more opportunity and more hope to do that.”
The agency is a beacon of hope that lives up to its name.
“The Center for Transforming Lives really transforms lives,” said Tanisha Thomas, who got connected with the center when she was going through a difficult time a few years ago.
Thomas lost her job and then her place to live a few years ago. She stayed on different friends’ couches, with a then one-year-old baby to provide for.
“It was insurmountable pressure on me,” she said. “I was depressed. Ashamed. And, depressed. Did I say depressed? I was just at the end of my rope. I was really at the end of myself. I was suicidal, honestly.”
But a call to the Center for Transforming Lives changed the direction of hers.
“I stayed there and received the counseling and the free childcare,” said Thomas. “I went from suicidal to a student.”
Now Thomas has a safe place to live for her and her son, and she is studying to become a counselor herself.
“I am grateful to be a part of the center,” she said. “I am so excited for the future women that are coming and for their children.”
Each family that Center for Transforming Lives successfully transitions from homelessness to self-sufficiency saves the community approximately $20,000 per year, according to the agency.
In 2024, the nonprofit moved 205 families out of shelters and off the streets, and 81% remained stably housed. Savings to the community are estimated at $4.1 million.
For more information, you can find the website here.
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Caroline Vandergriff
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