Allen Weeks, director of St. Johns Community School Alliance and Austin Voices for Education and Youth, is a member of the ABBA-facilitated Ministry Leadership Council.
Weeks says his group’s annual Hope Fest event at Reagan High School has benefited from ABBA’s help. “When we started we didn’t have a nonprofit or the structure to take donations. ABBA took over the whole business end for us. Now about 3,000 people attend and we have 100 exhibitors.”
Weeks has since established six family resource centers at Austin ISD and Manor ISD schools that are open daily to provide similar resources to families in crisis.
ABBA has provided much-needed networking for Weeks’ alliance. “They cut across different sectors, and get people out of their silos and speaking to one another and working together,” he adds. “ABBA has good connections with Hispanic and African-American church leaders. They introduced me to them. Today they are some of our closest friends and churches we work with.
“No one part of the human body is able to completely do any task. Likewise, when one church or one couple or individual tries to do everything they will fail. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You are supposed to be part of a (bigger) solution. It’s foolish for a nonprofit or a church to say ‘we’re going to solve poverty,’” he says. “It will not happen. But working together we can see a lot happen.
Weeks says he’s learned that creating those collaborative solutions takes patience. “You can make all sorts of plans but building nurturing relationships take time. If you’ are going to work together productively there is no substitute.”
LEARN MORE ABOUT ABBA: