Mercy House MAP Center for Excellence Pathway House Youth Navigation Program Manna House
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The Problem

Our community is ravaged by poverty.

85.8%

Eighty-five point eight percent of the children in our neighborhood live in poverty. In a nation where approximately one in four children grows up in poverty, our neighborhood has a disproportionately high number of children living in poverty.

99.0%

The Washington Park/Gibbs Village community has an average per capita income lower than that of 99.0% of the neighborhoods in the United States. 

24.9%

The current real estate vacancy rate in our neighborhood is 24.9%. This is higher than the rate of vacancies in 91.0% of all U.S. neighborhoods. Most of our housing is vacant year round, which is a contributes to high rates of homelessness in our community.

The Solution

Eradicate Poverty and Care for People in the Process

Day Shelter

The Mercy House building is our day shelter and is where we care for people in the process of transforming this community. It allows us to bring people in need into our orbit, to establish trust with our neighbors, and to be in-tune with the needs of the community. It houses a clothing closet, two laundry/dryer units, two showers, and a food pantry. It meets immediate, basic human needs and is a spring board into the rest of our ministry.

Children and Youth

We invest in our community’s future by investing in our children. We see that by breaking the chains of generational poverty, we’ll eradicate poverty in this community, we’ll keep it from spreading to the communities around us, and we’ll see stronger and stronger generations coming up behind them. The MAP Youth Navigation & Summer Enrichment Programs have almost 150 children, and located at 1516 Mobile Road (the former main building of Common Ground Montgomery).

We offer tutoring, after-school and summer programs, as well as youth outreach. When we create spaces that allow kids to be kids, safely, when are changing Montgomery’s trajectory for the better.

Education Programs

With various partnerships we offer several ways to help our community, whether at the MAP Center for Excellence or the Pathway House, with programs providing a pathway out of poverty. We want to help eradicate poverty, not just move it to another part of Montgomery or Alabama.

We’ve got a library and reading incentive programs to put books back into the community. There’s a business center with the technological infrastructure our neighbors don’t have. We host a satellite location for Trenholm State Community College that’s for helping adults get their GED and High School Diploma. All things to help provide a path out of poverty.

Grace

Our neighbors are hurting. Poverty doesn’t leave people unscathed. We have few intact family-structures. Our children are committing acts of violence against each other. When facing this hurt, we welcome many of our neighbors to come to New Walk of Life Church, because it’s known as a place where grace and love and mercy can be found. Because of New Walk of Life Church and it’s benevolence ministries, we’re able to provide hope to the hopeless by showing grace where it’s least expected.

Please understand that while we will always invite our neighbors to come to New Walk, no attendance is required to receive any of our services.

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“Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” Proverbs 19:17

There’s a place for you

in West Montgomery

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You become part in the Kingdom work God is doing in West Montgomery by giving financially or through in-kind gifts and services. Click below for ways to give.

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Serve

Looking for an opportunity to serve the Kingdom of God with your time or talents? There’s a place for your service here. Click below for volunteer opportunities.

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