Meet the Team- Jerry Houston

The Houston Foundation was started because of major problems conflicting us across this country.  These problems have gotten worse since the COVID-19 Disaster.  What are the problems?  I believe they are: Decrease levels of service or access to health care, facing systemic and institutional barriers of which most are below the poverty level, Significant emotional and trauma and medical issues confronting the people.   Also, I have seen people with no hope, no self-worth, defunding of inner city public schools, crime infested neighborhoods and no educational training to say the least.   We can’t ignore these problems anymore and need to develop a solution to these problems. 

I was born and raised in an underserved Community in Philadelphia, my father passed away when I was 10 years old, my mother raised me and my two brothers.  We were blessed to have a mother who instilled in us strong family values and a work ethic as she continues to do so at 92 years old.  She told us on many occasions that we have to work harder than anyone else to be successful.  We were poor, but didn’t know it.  

 We had to have confidence in ourselves first, that we would be able to be productive in this environment we were living in.  We were able to navigate through hard times to grow up to be successful.  It was hard, but the Community Services we were offered helped out tremendously.  At a young age, I found myself working on lead jobs. Leadership came easy for me, it followed me on every position I ever had.   Thirty-Five years of training gave me the experience to lead this foundation.  After being educated at Penn State, I received good leadership qualities.  As a training supervisor in the corporate world focusing on security investments, gave me the ability to interact with diversity.  

I was appointed in my church to serve on the Deacon Board for 29 years and placed in a lead position on the Finance Committee.   In addition, we helped hundreds of people doing various community service projects.  Serving people comes naturally for me, I’m a servant of the people and have been doing so all my life.  Personally, I’ve accepted the calling on my life and was given a vision to start the Houston Foundation to solve these problems.   I was blessed to be able to make a large financial investment to start this foundation to jump start our vision.  You must have the passion to do this kind of work, because its hard work.   And if you don’t have the passion for it, you will quit.  I’m excited about helping thousands of people transform their lives in my lifetime.  The ultimate goal is to empower others to live their best lives and lead positivity so they can be productive and give back to their community.  Working in this foundation, brings me personal joy and energy in my life.  The idea of helping a person get on track, because failure is not an option.  We have a team that is emotionally invested in this work.  Our blueprint to build Resource Centers across this country, but not just ordinary centers.  A place where people can go to receive the training, love, service and resources to build the community up.  In closing, just knowing people are struggling from trauma and mental issues is literally stopping people from living productive lives.  So the foundation need to articulate the vision that we have to everyday people, sell our ideas to the world, potential partners and donors.  We need everyone to help us to fulfill this vision with all hands on deck.  To solve these big problems, we need every penny and every dollar, we need your help.  The data shows, if we can fulfill the vision of our foundation, we can help millions of people in this country transform their lives, People like us, Do things like this, Because we care.