As the Hope Cottage Parenting Support team develops our partnerships with organizations like BridgeBuilders, we recognize that our community members need Parenting Outreach Specialists who live in the communities they serve. We hired Blanca Torres, a longtime resident of the Bonton-Ideal area, to deliver parenting education and diapers to our BridgeBuilders parenting cohorts. We interviewed Blanca about her experiences with Hope Cottage and South Dallas:

“I worked at Metro by T-Mobile in South Dallas for almost eleven years, and it became like a second home. When I worked from Metro, I instantly became family with my clients. I would help people with basic needs, adding cell phone numbers to their contact lists and showing them how to work touchscreen phones. I would buy water, snacks and sodas for elderly community members who needed spare change. I’ve always been a very compassionate person, so as long as I can help someone I’m content.

“My best friend was raised in Bonton. As I moved in with them got to know their community, they told me stories about how Bonton used to flood so badly that you couldn’t see local homes through all of the water. I couldn’t believe them. It didn’t seem possible for a community to have such low access to resources that are available to communities elsewhere. But now that I’ve moved into the area with my best friend, I understand what they were talking about. The community had low access to healthy food - where we live, there are only two grocery stores nearby, and neither sells produce. Nutrition is a struggle in a food dessert, and the community suffers from widespread health problems as a result. 

“Once I received a job presenting Parenting Education at BridgeBuilders, a Bonton + Ideal-based community organization, I realized that I had a chance to do even more to help my community. 

“When I started at BridgeBuilders, I worked with a small cohort of five moms. One mom contacted me back and told me that she had shared my class information in a WhatsApp chat so that other moms in the South Dallas community could attend Parenting classes. The class soon expanded into 2 cohorts of 25 moms. I can tell that we are making a difference in our community members’ lives because they keep coming back to our classes and inviting their friends.

“I’m a mom of two teenagers, and when I teach my classes I open up with my moms about my parenting experiences. When my daughter was younger, I struggled to respond healthily to her anger and tantrums. Since working for Hope Cottage, I’ve learned different techniques for handling these situations and helping support her through her emotional growth. By applying the strategies that we teach in our parenting classes, I can pay forward the lessons that my job teaches me in my own life. 

“My vulnerability with my clients builds trust that they can share their most challenging experiences with me. Moms share what they see on the day-to-day based on the topic of the class at hand. Often, my moms are their own best teachers, and they test out each other’s ideas and come back to class with success stories and suggestions for new parenting strategies. Sometimes, our lessons focus on the hidden self-care involved in healthy parenting, and we explore ways to find calm and happiness - an extra hour of sleep, a long shower, a cheap date night with our partners, etc - through the challenges of early parenting. Because my moms get to choose their class contents, every week covers the topic that’s most relevant for my moms’ immediate needs.

“Hope Cottage is dedicated to serving loving families in North Texas. Through my BridgeBuilders classes, I get to share my parenting knowledge with my community and build a family of moms who support and empower each other.”