Today we’d like to introduce you to Gwendolyn Jackson.
Gwendolyn, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My father Roy Jackson was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2013, and during our family battle with cancer, we were blessed with so much love and support from medical staff, support groups, other patients and agencies and family that provided financial and emotional support to meet my father’s needs. When my father lost his battle with cancer in September 2015, we wanted to provide that same love support and offer what we had learned during our journey to a family who were facing the same battle.
Initially, we started off wanting to offer financial assistance to patients and families at my father oncology clinic, by paying for parking and providing lunch monthly for at least ten patients. However, from what our goals increase to providing supportive services not only to families with loved one’s diagnosis with cancer, but our desire was to provide resources and support for all individuals, families, and communities in need are at risk. From there we started the process of partnering with other agencies, local nursing homes, schools, churches, and community non-profit organizations.
Some of the agencies that we currently are in partnership with are: Children of the Incarcerated Alliance, Give from the Heart, Wesley Elementary, Osborne Elementary, MC Williams Middle School, Winter Haven Nursing Home, Texas Children Hospital, Eisenhower 9th Grade Center, Keep Pressing, Greater Faith Baptist Church, FMBC, Blessed to Be a Blessing Foundation, and Harmony House Inc.
Has it been a smooth road?
Although creating the Roy L. Jackson Foundation, RLJ has been a labor of love, there have been challenges for our organization we have handled them head on and allowed it to be a learning process as we moved forward. Some of those challenges, in the beginning, were fundraising, transportation issues with picking up large donations and delivering resources to those in need in the communities.
Because we are a small organization at times, we lack the resources with having access to trucks to pick up large donations and to deliver those donations to members of the community. We are reliant on individuals in the communities to share their resources by volunteering to pick up and deliver donations.
This at time continues to be an ongoing challenge, but we have been able to meet our goals by planning and renting U-Haul trucks when other resources are not available to us. We expect there to be challenges, but the RLJ foundation continues to strive to work past our barriers to providing excellent service to those in need within our communities.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with R.L. Jackson Foundation – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The Roy L. Jackson Foundation, RLJ is a non-profit organization that was originally birthed to provide supporting outreach services for individuals and families who are battling cancer. However, during our journey, we have expanded our demographic population by providing outreach services to seniors, single parents, low-income families, and homeless individuals in our communities.
We deliver food boxes monthly to seniors, organize an annual back to school backpack drive and health fair, provide education service at local churches and community center about cancer, sponsor annual Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets and gifts for the elderly patients at the local nursing home.
This year, we were most proud to have had the opportunity to collected disaster relief product to help families in North Carolina that were affected by Hurricane Florence. We were able to provide a truckload of supplies, that we personally delivered.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2110 West Little York Houston, TX 77091
- Phone: 831-853-0308
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