Maria, a single mother, was left with a choice. Maria could continue to work to provide for her family needs and risk losing her children because she had to leave them alone at night or not work and be able to stay home with her children in order to keep them. Social services began threatening to take Maria’s children away due to the fact that she was leaving her three children alone at night, with the oldest being fifteen, while she worked her job as a manager of a cleaning company. Maria did not know what to do because any job she was able to get during the day did not pay sufficiently to provide food and housing for the entire family, due to her language and educational restrictions. This story and others like it are the inspiration behind the informal founding of Community 54:13 in Fall 2005 in partnership with ServiceMaster by Brown, a commercial cleaning company. Community 54:13 gained official legal status as a 501(c)3 on March 1, 2006.
Community 54:13 is a nonprofit that is driven to be a “virtuous family”. Our vision is to be an all-encompassing Godly force on earth made up of people, means, and resources that share the same purpose and passion of reaching the lost for Christ. We will focus the resources God has given us on the working poor while bringing the suburban community together with the urban community. We will share Christ’s love to bring those we touch to a personal relationship with Christ. We will be Jesus to the community of Albuquerque.
In the past two years Community 54:13 has searched for the appropriate child development center to partner with while providing other services to families. The other services provided to families include support with state child care assistance, connection to low cost health insurance, aid in understanding the various systems that working poor families operate in, etc. We have operated with an annual budget of $150,000 each year and met this budget through financial and in kind donations for the past two years.
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