Matrix connects Osborn families to success
By Edith Assaff
DETROIT — Two years ago, Alvena Culver felt that her life was at a stand-still. She had no income, no education and she was a single mother in her late 30s with a teenager and a toddler. She had no hope that life would ever be any better than it was.
But she was wrong. A flyer stuck on her doorknob one day announced a new program at the Matrix Human Services Center in Detroit’s Osborn neighborhood called “Connecting Families,” funded by The Skillman Foundation’s 10-year, $100-million Good Neighborhoods program. C onnecting Families offered a variety of services for every member of the family so that children could be engaged in programs while parents developed skills and planned their future. E ncouraged by the services listed, Alvena visited the Matrix Center, located in the former Mt. Zion Lutheran Church at McNichols and Gratiot, for the first time. She was greeted by Dawne Velianoff, project director for Connecting Families.
“Dawne hugged me and was sweet and understanding,” Culver recalls. “She told me, ‘My door is always open to you.’ I felt so isolated and alone, and as soon as I walked in the door, I instantly had family.”
Now Alvena’s life is so full she can’t imagine ever standing still again. In two short years, she gained her GED, passing with the highest math score in her class, and plans to enroll in college this summer.
“My GED teacher, Ms. Peete, really went the distance for me,” she says. “She came in an hour before class every day to tutor me – she gave me what would have been her prep time for her class.”
Culver’s toddler Jordan, now four, was enrolled in Head Start while she attended her GED and computer classes. “We learned together,” she says. Son Timothy, now 18, took advantage of the Matrix basketball court while his mom was in class and attended church services with his family at the Center’s beautiful sanctuary.
“I also received counseling and took parenting classes to help me to better manage things at home,” Culver says. “Matrix set us up with so many essentials that we were lacking – everything from a car seat to a computer, even clothes, food, and household accessories.”
Culver’s college plans will take her to the next step in her life – following either a nursing career or a human services career.
“I want to do for others what I see Connecting Families doing. I want to learn how to help people, to give back some of what has been given to me. And I want to teach others how to pass the baton to the next generation.”
Breaking the cycle of poverty
Culver’s experience marks the success of Connecting Families, now in its third year at Matrix Human Services Center in Osborn. Connecting Families provides educational and family support services for low-income families, including year-round, 7-days-a-week activities that include after-school programs, employment and educational skills-building programs, and family activities.
Although the Matrix Center is located in Osborn, Matrix Human Services has been providing a variety of citywide programs to Detroiters for more than 100 years, with programs focused on helping individuals and families increase their self-sufficiency and improve their quality of life.
“Connecting Families is a cornerstone program in our ‘Transition to Success’ model for breaking the cycle of generational poverty,” says Matrix Human Services president and CEO Marcella Wilson. “Because I come from a medical background, I wanted to apply the managed care model to poverty intervention. That means coordinating services rather than directly providing services. It’s a model that’s already been proven in health care, and it makes sense to apply it to human services as well.”
Research has shown that by housing various social service agencies and programs within one building, community residents enjoy improved access to the services they need. Programs in multi-service centers benefit from increased visibility, lower overhead costs and expanded resources available for children and families.
A powerful zone
In 2006 Matrix began the transformation of the Mt. Zion Lutheran Church, a large complex of buildings on McNichols and Gratiot, and established it as the Matrix Human Services Center. It provides a perfect venue for pioneering this managed care model of shared programming and collaboration services for families.
“We needed to stop thinking that Matrix could do it all and start looking around to find out who is providing the best of the best services in the city, then get them to come here,” Wilson says. In two years, Matrix has succeeded in engaging more than 100 mission partners who offer programs, either consistently or occasionally, at the Center.
“Our partners are impressive,” says Scott Gifford, Matrix Director of Community Development and Outreach. “Any time you can get entities such as the College for Creative Studies, Wayne State University, Wayne County Community College, Lawrence Technological University, the University of Phoenix, Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit, Pewabic Pottery, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, Accounting Aid Society, the Detroit Public Schools, the Detroit Public Library, the Friend of the Court, the Henry Ford Health System, Henry Ford Museum, and countless other high-quality service providers to come under the same roof for the benefit of neighborhood families, you’ve got one of the most powerful zones in the city right here.”
As a result, the Center has become a unified complex of human services and community programs that connect with the social, physical, spiritual, and educational needs of northeast Detroit residents and their families. During the intake and assessment phase, Matrix begins with basic needs intervention, providing coaching and referrals to help families obtain transportation, child care, housing, health care, and other basic needs. Ongoing support includes job placement and training, education, career planning and placement, financial asset building, and continuous life coaching. The Center even offers small business entrepreneur opportunities, such as a boutique and a barber shop. In addition, Matrix has preserved the original 1946 sanctuary of Mt. Zion Lutheran Church, a Detroit architectural landmark, with its stunning vaulted ceilings. New Covenant of Peace World Impact Ministries rents the sanctuary for religious services, enabling the Center to also feed the spiritual life of the neighborhood.
“We needed to think big, the way The Skillman Foundation is thinking big,” Gifford says. “We have a big complex here at the Center. We need to fill it up to capacity with partners offering every service our neighborhood needs, and with as many neighborhood families as we can.”
Gifford’s reach has definitely brought results. Today, more than 2,500 guests visit the Matrix Human Service Center each week. Starting with five programs three years ago, the Center now offers 88 programs under one roof. Its GED program has graduated more students than any Detroit Public Schools adult education program in the past two years, and it also runs the largest Head Start program in the city.
One reason for the Center’s success, Gifford says, is that families are treated as customers and guests. One of the Center’s star customers agrees.
“I see something in Matrix, something that is growing and reaching more and more people like me,” Alvena Culver says. “They helped me to triumph over difficulties and expand to new heights. I have rekindled myself and my hunger for education, and I want to pass that hunger along to my children.”
For more information about the Matrix Human Services Center, call 313.526.4001or visit www.matrixhumanservices.org .
— By Edith Assaff, a Berkley-based writer who has chronicled the Good Neighborhoods program since its inception