Single mom Tina Rodriguez knows what it’s like to have children and be without a home. Rodriguez used to live at the Wesley Community Center with her two youngsters, a boy and a girl, now 11 and 12 years old. The center provides permanent housing for homeless women and children in Corpus Christi.
The young mother and her children originally came to Texas to give emotional support to a child they knew in foster care, but for reasons beyond their control, they wound up at a homeless shelter.
“By the grace of God, we found this place,” said Rodriguez, looking around the center’s community room, where families eat meals and relax when they are not at work or school.    
Rodriguez now works as a receptionist and food pantry clerk at the center and lives in her own home. Her children want to go back to the center, she said, because they miss the security and camaraderie there. Rodriguez speaks highly of the Wesley Community Center and what it offered her, including an opportunity to participate in Jobs for Life, a faith-based job-training program that taught her computer skills.
“It really helped me build a lot more confidence,” she said. “I changed a lot, and I owe it all to the resources I found here. And, Miss MaLinda offered me a job here.”
MaLinda is Executive Director MaLinda Conway Faughn.
Wesley Community Center began in Robstown 75 years ago with a $25 donation and a desire to help migrant children receive a better education and learn to speak English. A second center opened in Corpus Christi in 2001. The Robstown location provides child care and a food pantry but no permanent housing.
The center purchased its current Corpus Christi building, a former convent that can house up to eight families, in 2003 from the Carmelite Sisters. Located on MacArthur Street, the center has apartments for women and children. The permanent housing opened in the summer of 2015, Faughn said.
Prior to that, the building housed a child care learning center and a food pantry along with housing for mission teams and Hurricane Katrina survivors, she said.
A learning center in the building provides pre-school programs and after-school care for children ages 2 weeks to 12 years. Children are picked up from homeless shelters and brought to Wesley Community Center’s learning center each day then returned back to the shelter in the evening.
“We offer permanent housing with support services, and the mothers sign a lease and go to work and to school,” Faughn said. “It’s housing for women who are ready to leave a shelter but who are not ready to be on their own.”
A communal kitchen with plates, utensils, and cooking equipment provides a place for family and even community meals. Each family keeps a locked pantry of food for themselves.
Volunteers are needed to spruce up and maintain the property, including the playground and lawn. Other volunteer work includes indoor maintenance such as painting learning center classrooms.
Donations of items such as toilet paper and personal hygiene and cleaning products are also needed.
“If you can’t afford food, you can’t afford all of the necessities that a lot of us take for granted,” Faughn said. “When the mothers and kids come to us, they come with just their clothes in a bag.”
Churches have provided pillows and bed linens, and donations of laundry soap and dryer sheets are always appreciated, since the center has a laundry area for the families.
“We are in constant motion,” Faughn continued. “During holidays, such as Easter and Christmas, volunteers are needed to make sure each child has a gift.”
HOW TO VOLUNTEER
To donate or volunteer, call Becky Char-Johnson, Mother/Child Program manager, at (361) 880-8300. Donations may also be dropped off at the center’s front desk, 4015 MacArthur St. in Corpus Christi.
For more information, visit wesleycommunitycenter.org.