Supporting  Single Moms, Young Adults, Children, Seniors, Veterans, and Persons with Disabilities in Underserved Areas of Texas

WREM Literacy Group, Inc.

To answer the call for housing in rural Texas, we responded to a Notice of Funding Availability from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs with a request to fund a project that would provide decent housing in rural areas of Texas. We were awarded a grant in which we can reserve more than a million dollars for use in servicing first-time homebuyers, senior citizens, disabled veterans, persons with disabilities, and other non-homeowners living in depressed housing conditions. Waller County was the pilot for the project. Currently, our territory includes eight counties across Texas: Waller, Grimes, Liberty, Cherokee, Kaufman, Ellis, Johnson, and Hood. We are eager to add more counties as the need is brought to our attention.

Within one year, we have rehabilitated housing for 8 citizens; and we have turned 9 into first-time homebuyers, with 5 waiting to start. There are more than 60 people on our housing waiting list. In addition, we have published a book on effective methods for teaching young children to read. Plans are underway to incorporate a YouthBuild program to train high-school dropouts for a job in construction, while they work toward a GED. A capital campaign has been launched to develop The Your Discovery Place. The Your Discovery Place is a family life center with a focus on family stability. Here, a family can find the resources to strengthen the family structure and participate in job skills training.  As part of our effort to wage war on poverty, WREM has been granted a contract to work with Young Adults aging out of foster care, the WREM SPIL Project. Under this project, the Young Adults will participate in a program of Supervised Preparation for Independent Living.

WREM has a great future because of the people comprising our team. My employees, board members, and volunteers exhibit the compassion, commitment, and diligence that assures our operation runs efficiently. I am deeply grateful to them and all of their hard work. Their dedication to our vision, our mission, is extraordinary. Collectively, we form a synergy that fortifies the drive to end generational poverty and create opportunities that will enlighten the future for our children.

As we look to the future, I am acknowledging with deepest gratitude your support in the past, and I am thanking you in advance for your continued support as we move individuals from poverty to earning a sustainable income. It is my personal wish that you are generously engaged in our effort to end intergenerational poverty through the provision of services that empower our clients to live decently and self-sufficiently. With our combined efforts, slowly, but surely, we will balance poverty in rural areas. I can see tomorrow as a place where poverty no longer continues to cross generational lines.

With warmest regards and many Blessings,

The WREM Literacy Group, Inc.

Deborah M. Dennis

My Dearest Friends of the WREM Literacy Group, Inc.,

My name is Deborah M. Dennis, and it is my greatest pleasure  to make this introduction of both the WREM Literacy Group, Inc. (WREM) and me as its CEO.

 
WREM is a nonprofit organization formed to address the needs of low-income families in rural Texas, particularly of single mothers with young children.  It was initially formed to address the academic issues of children, who were not school ready at age 5.  Through our early childhood program,  the organization undertook the task of preparing children between the ages of 3 and 5 to enter school by teaching them to read, enforcing the expected classroom behavior, and monitoring the social skills necessary for them to start kindergarten with the ability to stay on task as mature and enthusiastic learners.

Statistics show that there is an imbalance of poverty in rural areas --- especially in Texas which leads the nation in rural poverty. Moreover, because of the gross need for decent housing in rural communities, school children were coming of age in either crowded housing situations or unstable housing environments, which resulted in multiple moves.  Poor academic behavior in low-income areas  was directly linked to the housing environment. 

With a vision to infuse decent and affordable housing with enrichments in academics to mitigate this problem, WREM incorporated the provision of decent and affordable housing in its mission and reflectively amended its charter during 2009.