ABOUT US
Mission Statement
Grace Ministries believes in a world where all children should have equal access to a quality education and nutritional food. We work with all people, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender. Founded in 2014, we work on the ground, side by side, with the poorest children living in Round Rock, TX, where poverty rates in many school districts exceeds 80%.
The mission of our ministry is to provide healthy meals for the poor and vulnerable, to educate for self sufficiency. Our workshops will include a Center of Brilliance test; careers will be recommended that compliment talents, ACC enrollment assistance, FAFSA enrollment assistance and financial/budgeting education will be provided.
Board of Directors
Chair, Kayla Williams-DiNardo, Farmers Insurance agency owner
Deacon Richard Kotrola, Director, Annie’s Way and Just Because
Matt and Megan DiTeresa, Financial Advisor
Gilbert Bernal, Attorney, Stahl, Bernal, Davies, Sewell & Chavarria
Dan Morman, Executive Coach, Praxis Innovation
Norma Roche-Rodriguez, Attorney
Clint Tomlinson, Principal, Canyon Creek Construction
Operations Plan:
We will need to keep changing and updating the operations plan as we go along and learn. We won’t know everything from the start.
Phase 1:
In partnership with the RRISD, we will serve children and families who live in the Title 1 school districts where poverty rates exceed 80%. Bluebonnet elementary will be our first target school and we will focus on 25 families of 4 during the roll-out phase of the pilot program.
RRISD will identify the families who are most at risk, promote our services internally, allow us to use their elementary school parking lots as distribution sites and provide a staff member for each event.
Our families will receive a crockpot and 3 healty meals per week, 52 weeks.
Phase 2:
We will expand the target area to 4 remaining targeted RRISD Title 1 Schools (where 135 and 45 intersect) to include: Berkman, Voight, Callison, and Lake Travis elementary schools.
Three months following the roll-out of this program, we will introduce a self sufficiency workshop. The workshop will include a Center of Brilliance test; careers will be recommended that compliment talents, ACC enrollment assistance,FAFSA enrollment assistance and financial/budgeting education will be provided.
Phase 3
We are hoping that other groups will emulate the model. We will make a "help kit" program that can be shared far and wide that would create a playbook for bringing this model into other communities. We imagine a "franchise" model approach where Grace Ministries of Round Rock is the "test bed" where we live and we learn. A portion of our time and efforts are spent creating content, best practices, and resources for other communities who want to implement the same program. While not diminishing the value to the 500 people we can directly impact, how do you turn 500 people into 50,000 in the same time-frame?
Grace Ministries of Austin
