The Cloth is an “organization of organizations"
focusing on resources for children and families
in the greater Third Ward area.

Our Mission and Guiding Principle: 

To identify, mobilize, unify, stabilize, create and coordinate resources to nurture and enhance the bodies, minds and spirits of children, youth and families in the greater Third Ward area. 

Our History: 

The Third Ward Community Cloth Cooperative (the Cloth) is a direct outgrowth of two community initiatives: SHAPE Community Center's Project Harambee implemented in 1990, and the Houston Area Urban League's Coffee and Conversation organized in 1992. Starting with 16 organizations in 1992, the Cloth has reached over 400 community-based organizations, churches, schools and businesses serving one of Houston's oldest inner-city neighborhoods.

What makes us unique is our concept of being an “ORGANIZATION OF ORGANIZATIONS" focusing on resources for children and families in the greater Third Ward area. Recognizing our guiding principles requires a different approach, twelve threads were established with a focus on addressing existing gaps, deficits and emerging needs, of families, by identifying and/or developing approaches to meet those needs. 

Today, The Cloth continues to weave a grassroots fabric spreading across the greater Third Ward community thus ensuring adequate coverage for children and families.

Third Ward Community Fund Management Corporation

The Cloth recognized its need for a mechanism to support its vision. So in 1995, the Third Ward Community Fund Management Corporation (TWCFMC) was created to support the leadership of the Cloth. The Third Ward Community Cloth Cooperative’s administrative support, through the TWCFMC, will continue to strengthen and coordinate our administrative operations, essentially allowing us to move from a “volunteer/ contract staff supported operation” to a model structure that can better offer resources to fully address new and pressing organizational needs.  

The Core Values of the TWCFMC are:

• CAPACITY-BUILDING: Strengthen the economic sustainability and stabilization of The Cloth nonprofit and our community partners, with knowledge and skills, expanding their capacities to meet the needs of children, youth and families in the Greater Third Ward area. 

• UNITY: Strengthening existing connections between our coalition of Cloth members to increase partnership and cooperation, based on a foundation of trust, transparency, and synergy. 

• RESOURCES: Enhance the information sharing of resources amongst Cloth members that help address current community issues and the needs of residents in the Third Ward. 

• SHARED PROSPERITY: Increasing the operational capacity of the Cloth by recruiting full- time staff and Cloth leadership within the threads who can help improve the quality and volume of services provided to support the economic sustainability and stabilization of Cloth members.

Since its inception 30 years ago, The Third Ward Community Cloth Cooperative has achieved its primary goal of making available information on needs, resources, and access to resources for the underserved and economically challenged in the third ward area. The Cloth formerly organized as a 501(c)(3) under the name, Third Ward Community Fund Management Corporation to ensure the sustainability of its work. Over 600 social, health and community organizations have benefitted from our monthly capacity building sessions.  The meetings are conducted on the first Tuesday of each month, from 8:30am-10:00am, where we are joined by 50-60 participating organizations to access our wealth of resources, training, and talented pool of professionals.

About 12 years ago, the TWCFMC and the Cloth identified 5-10 non-profits in desperate need of professional staff support but without the resources to finance their needs. As a result in 2011, the Third Ward Community Cloth Cooperative Intern Project was created as a way of addressing this need. Partnering with the University of Houston-Graduate College of Social Work, five to seven Masters level interns were assigned to agencies TWCFMC assessed that would benefit from this support. Today our agencies have trained over 150 interns primarily from the Graduate School, but also have included undergraduate social work programs at Prairie View and Texas Southern University. Since 2018, additional support has been provided by the University of Houston Graduate college of Social Work and several of the newer agencies that are now participating in the program.  These donations have allowed us to provide a small honorarium to the Field instructors required by the university (an Accrediting requirement) to instruct the interns. 

What’s to come? The TWCFMC will expand its internship programs by converting our current volunteer consultant base (15 pool of field instructors and other experts + 10 interns) into a business group that diagnoses, identifies solutions, and provides technical (administrative, operation and/or program) support to individuals or groups of organizations.  

The TWCFMC is also rolling out our Capacity Building Unit (CCBU)—this program will complement the Cloth’s capacity-building role in the community and provide additional support for the new CCBU. The Cloth is redefining the threads to offer more comprehensive support to our greater Third Ward. 

Today, our national, state and local issues of social injustices and continued lack of access offers us a transformative opportunity.  That opportunity includes the re-examination and priority changes the Cloth will undertake to strengthen our capacity-building role so that we may continue to be of value and service to organizations, agencies, churches, families and individuals in the greater Third Ward.

OUR FOUNDING MEMBERS:

• Access Health

• Communities in Schools at Yates

• Community Artists' Collective

• FUUSA (now Change Happens)

• Houston Area Urban League

• MLK, Jr. Community Center

• Operation Smart

• Over the Hill, Inc.