For the past 13 years, United Way Thrive has helped families in the Greater Houston Area with the resources and services needed to build financial security. In 2021, United Way Thrive assisted families with 30,500 tax returns with more than $46 million in net refunds returned. To learn more about the work of United Way Thrive, we sat down with Carmela Walker, United Way Thrive’s Coordinator, and Prosperity Now Community Champion and Community Steering Committee Member. 

Hello Carmela, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Could you share a little bit about your role with United Way Thrive? 

I am the United Way Thrive Coordinator and Financial Coach for the Greater Houston Area Urban League. The scope of my work includes occupational skills training under our workforce development program. The partnership between the Urban League and United Way gives us the opportunity to offer six programmatic services, including workforce development, small business, social justice, education, health and wellness, and housing. We’ve also expanded our nonprofit partnerships to over 200 partners in the Greater Houston Area. Within that area, we service the A.L.I.C.E demographic, individuals who are asset limited, income constrained, and employed. 

How is your year going so far? What key challenges are you seeking to address as an organization? 

We really feel that we’re thriving so far this year. We’ve engaged in a lot of aggressive community outreach to better understand how to address the mental health and wellness concerns of our clients. With the end of the eviction moratorium and the financial obstacles they continue to face, many clients really feel that they’re at the edge of a cliff. We’re incorporating mental wellness with our economic development program, and our housing and educational supports. We also partnered with Texas Children’s Hospital to conduct outreach to individuals interested in obtaining the vaccine. The thing right now for us is really about the mental health component. Many of our clients are really struggling to find housing, which has increased homelessness; they are unable to find jobs and are defaulting on their loans. We’re really trying to think creatively and strategically with our partners to do our best to mitigate further economic fallout. Every situation is different, but overall, finding more resources for our clients, particularly the BIPOC community, is really the biggest challenge for us right now. 

How has your experience been working with Prosperity Now? 

The snapshots of available data that Prosperity Now offers to Community Champions via the Scorecard is the best I’ve seen. Prosperity Now features the most important aspects of the issues we’re all facing, whether it’s housing, taxes or employment. I love engaging in workshops and conservations with Prosperity Now because it’s solution-oriented and really gets at strategies we can use to address the issues facing our communities. Overall, I’m just very grateful to be in partnership with Prosperity Now. 

Anything else to add? 

Sustainability is huge in my mind right now. We’re beginning to have conservations now about real estate and community infrastructure. We’re currently depending on systems that have been disappointing and have put us in this crisis. Scaling small businesses to improve our economy will really determine how we recover as a region, and as a nation. 

To learn more about United Way Thrive visit their website!