Janet Collinsworth has guided families toward stability and assisted women experiencing homelessness.
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Janet Collinsworth left an accounting career to help others.
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She started the Agape Research and Assistance Center to help women dealing with homelessness.
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Now, Collinsworth is behind the effort to build affordable housing in Wylie for women in need.
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Janet Collinsworth left an accounting career to help others.
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She started the Agape Research and Assistance Center to help women dealing with homelessness.
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Now, Collinsworth is behind the effort to build affordable housing in Wylie for women in need.
PLANO, Texas:At the height of her public accounting career, a woman from North Texas decided to become a public servant in order to support others.
Janet Collinsworth has guided families toward stability and assisted women experiencing homelessness.
Teaching her daughter’s year-long Methodist confirmation class was the first step toward the transformation.
“I was raised in the church and so I knew all the stories and I thought, well, how hard can this be?” said Collinsworth. “When I opened the curriculum to begin to prepare for that class, I realized I might know the stories, but I didn’t know theology.”
Collinsworth took a different route and earned a master’s degree in theology from SMU’s Perkins School of Theology.
More change resulted from that. After closing her forensic accounting practice, she accepted a staff post at a Plano United Methodist church.
In 2009, she established a food pantry with the North Texas Food Bank.
“That food pantry is still going today and feeding thousands of individuals each and every year in east Plano,” stated Collinsworth.
Collinsworth discovered another need—housing—by providing for the demand for food. particularly for women and households headed by women and having children.
“One of the biggest problems that was not really being addressed at that time was the problem of homelessness and the problem of affordable housing,” said Collinsworth.
She started the Agape Research and Assistance Center, a ministry in east Plano, to assist. Its goal is to give homeless mothers and their kids a place to live and assistance.
“Helping them get through whatever happened was the main goal. For over 90% of those women, abuse was the primary cause of their homelessness, regardless of the circumstances that led to it. They were fleeing mistreatment. Agape became a safe haven for those who came from various states and occasionally from sex trafficking, giving them the chance to obtain the services they required to become self-sufficient, Collinsworth explained.
However, women leaving the year-long Agape program were still unable to afford to live on their own due to rising mortgages and rents.
“We took another risk and came up with a really creative design. We refer to it as an urban village,” Collinsworth added.
38 income-based flats will be housed in nine residential buildings in Wylie’s Jericho Village, which takes its name from the Old Testament fortified city.
The structures foster a sense of community for women and their kids and offer wrap-around services.
“Building an affordable housing village was not on my bucket list, but it is probably one of the most joyous things that I’ve embarked on and the community support and our excitement in providing stable homes for families in need has just changed all of us,” stated Collinsworth.
Jericho Village is anticipated to debut in October of the following year.
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The information in this article is based on a discussion between Janet Collinsworth and Shaun Rabb.
The information in this article is based on a discussion between Janet Collinsworth and Shaun Rabb.
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