Brother Bill's Helping Hand

A doctor. A coach. A counselor. Health looks like a lot of things here.
One day, one gift, one next step. September 17.

A doctor at our clinic can write a prescription for produce.

It isn't a figure of speech. It's a program called Produce RX, and it works about how it sounds. A neighbor with high blood pressure picks up fresh produce every other week, gets some help learning what to do with it, and comes back for regular check-ups so somebody is watching alongside her.

The reason a program like that has to exist is simple. For a lot of our neighbors, the food that would fix the problem costs more than the food that won't.

And the reason it works here, when it wouldn't work most places, is that the food is in the same building as the doctor. No second trip, no second appointment, no bus.

Briseida enrolled last year with her blood pressure running high. She changed how she cooks. Over the following months it came down about 13 percent, and it has stayed there.

That story isn't only about blood pressure. It's about a financial coach who'll sit down and build a plan with her, which we do alongside our partners at Ascend Dallas. A screening for depression and anxiety that happens at a regular appointment, so nobody has to be brave enough to make a separate one. Counselors, who see neighbors in English and Spanish. And an optional, short devotion in English and Spanish before the grocery store opens each day.

That's what health means here: physical, financial, mental and spiritual, in one building, for one family, on one afternoon.

And it means the whole family. A parent who comes to our clinic can bring her children to the same place. Well visits, vaccinations, and a doctor who knows the family, in the building where they already get their groceries. For a lot of our neighbors, the hardest part of taking a child to the doctor was never the doctor. It was the time off, the bus, the paperwork, and the language.

It works in more than one direction. Sandra spent five months with a financial coach, through a car breakdown and a surgery, and finished with $1,260 saved and her kids learning about money from her. This year, 14 working neighbors stayed in their homes with $28,000 in rental assistance through Empowering Financial Futures. Every one of them has a job, and the help arrived in time.

Here's the honest problem. Most neighbors meet us at the grocery store, and the line is long. So somebody takes her cart and goes home, and everything else in this building goes unmentioned.

So this year we're taking a next step of our own. A trained Navigator meets every family, asks the questions that matter, and walks them to whichever door they need.

On September 17, your gift meets a specific neighbor at a specific moment.

Brother Bill's Helping Hand started in 1943, when Pastor Bill Harrod of the Eagle Ford Baptist Mission began helping families in West Dallas. The neighbors called him Brother Bill. Eighty-three years later his name is still on the door.

What began in one zip code now reaches more than 200. Neighbors come here for groceries they choose themselves, a doctor at our Community Health Clinic for adults and children, mental health screening and counseling, after-school programs for their kids, and a coach who'll build a plan with them.

Two out of three of our neighbors would rather talk with us in Spanish, and 80 percent of our staff are bilingual. The clinic is also the Clínica de Salud Comunitaria. Language should never be a barrier to better health, or to anything else that happens here.

Our clinic has been a free and charitable clinic for as long as we've had one, and we have never turned anyone away for inability to pay.

More than half the people who work at Brother Bill's first came here as neighbors looking for help. Many of them are now managing and leading teams of their own.

Why give

Your gift meets a real moment, not a general fund. It clears the one thing standing between a neighbor and their next step, whether that's the rent, a ride, or a doctor's appointment she'd otherwise put off another year.

Your gift reaches all of it. Most of what happens here is paid for by people who simply give to Brother Bill's, which is why one gift can reach a clinic visit, a counseling session, a coaching plan and a grocery cart in the same week.

Your gift stays close to home. Every dollar works right here in Dallas, for families you'd recognize from the neighborhood.