Mission

CONNECT community is a collaboration of best-in-class organizations that builds healthy neighborhoods by partnering with residents to advance their educational, economic, physical, and spiritual wellbeing by delivering services to improve outcomes for every person, every step of the way.

What We Do

Over the past few decades, cheap rents have attracted many first-generation immigrants to settle in Sharpstown/Gulfton. As a result, this has become one of the most densely populated and culturally diverse communities in Houston. It is also one of the most economically challenged.Connect Community is focusing its efforts and measuring its impact within a clearly delineated geographic area called the Impact Zone, which encompasses an approximately one-mile radius around the Connect campus at 6700 Bellaire Boulevard. Within this Impact Zone, approximately 65 percent of the residents are from Central America and Mexico, and 30 percent are refugees from around the world who have limited English, education and skills.

As Connect Community - KIPP Public Schools, YMCA, Legacy Community Health and St. Luke's United Methodist Church - work to align goals, core competencies, resources, strategies, and data collection around a common agenda, it will achieve greater impact related to the three areas that are of the utmost importance to the majority of area residents, who are new immigrants and refugees: linguistic, economic, and civic. Essential to Connect Community’s success is an exceptional and highly committed ground team that successfully leverages partners, wins the trust of the community, and connects outside resources; a strong program delivery model; and the right technology to gather data, coordinate efforts, and track outcomes. Connect Community partners are committed to providing a “high-touch” approach by consistently engaging community members to identify the solutions they need to support themselves and their children along the path to success. The Connect partnership will also be accountable to the community through a “high-tech” approach focused on evaluating outcomes and using data to make continuous improvements in program delivery.