Somewhere around 1996 the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of Houston and the leaders of their Health System visited ARISE Las Milpas. They were very impressed with what they saw. The idea that "ARISE" was the women of the community, doing what they could to bring their own community to a new level of development, was very attractive to them. Soon after that visit they offered the money to bring the ARISE model to yet another community. Already, the ARISE Las Milpas staff had selected the South Tower colonia community as one where they would eventually like to see ARISE at work. Two ARISE Las Milpas women were chosen to go to South Tower in 1997. Their charge was to establish a relationship with the people of that community and to ready the way for another ARISE to grow. They did that. As they visited families of the community they kept their eyes and ears open for women who they might invite as staff. They spotted several that seemed to have the heart that they knew ARISE would need.
ARISE South Tower Staff
The home visits and lots of informal association with the people revealed the needs that the people felt in the community. Many of the needs were similar to those heard in Las Milpas. The Las Milpas programs were already created and written down. South Tower was able to borrow the work done by the Las Milpas staff when it was to time implement a program. The original center for ARISE South Tower was a small Toyota truck. Later a small house in the neighborhood was rented. And in 1999 the ARISE South Tower Center was built. Like the other Centers, it is a small and modest building located right in the neighborhood. It might have seemed that ARISE South Tower would be just like the other two ARISE programs. That was not so. There did seem to be a more blatant element of violence and fear in this community. This became a concern for ARISE South Tower.
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Participants in ARISE Manualidades (Arts and Crafts) display their work.
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Mothers and children recieve their awards for participating in ARISE Early Childhood Development.
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In 1995, ARISE led the formation of a grassroots advocacy group named Voces del Pueblo (Voices of the People). This group was dedicated to working together with the Hidalgo County Sherff and his Office, the Hidalgo County Commissioner and his office, the Public School System and various other groups to get better police protection, street lights, and safe recreational space for the people of this South Tower community. By 2006, the Sheriff was sending a mobile police substation into the community on a regular basis. In October of 2007, ARISE and the County Commissioner together with a cadre of politicians, other service agency representatives, and the media gathered to celebrate the achievement of a community park there in the center of the South Tower colonia. The ground was broken at around 11AM that day.
Groundbreaking Ceremony for South Tower Park
So while all of the ARISE Centers hold many beliefs, guiding principles, and underlying understandings in common, each is quite different from the other.
