Charity Spotlight: The Agape Foundation & Agape Community Sports Services

December 16, 2020 – This week, the charity spotlight focuses on the American Agape Foundation, located in San Antonio, Texas. The American Agape Foundation strives to develop, provide, and preserve multifamily housing for the most vulnerable, in addition to serving the community through distributing food and groceries, hosting fun events for kids, and more. We’ve described a few successful programs sponsored by Agape below. To learn more about the American Agape Foundation, their programs, or how to get involved in your area, please visit their Facebook page. 

When an 18-wheeler fully loaded with Mexican refugees was found in a Walmart parking lot near San Antonio, Texas – David Starr, founder of the American Agape Foundation, was eager to help when he heard that 10 people did not survive the heat and 30 others were hospitalized. He set up an apartment near the San Antonio Medical Center to serve as a safe haven for one of the refugees so that she had a place to stay close to her family members who were hospitalized. Since the hospitals would not feed the refugees or provide them with any shelter, David Starr and The American Agape Foundation stocked the apartment with food, bottled water, hygiene products, and even rented washers and dryers. 

This story is just one example in a broad initiative that David Starr and the American Agape Foundation have created to help refugees in their community. 

The American Agape Foundation went on to partner with Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, in an effort to expand their role in providing housing to foreign refugees. The Refugee Program received thousands of refugees who have been homeless due to wars and injustice. These refugees have found a home in San Antonio with the help of Agape who has welcomed them by providing housing and other services. For the past eleven years, Agape and Catholic Charities have been able to provide affordable housing and access to social services, ESL classes, food and clothing donations, and transportation to these refugees. It is crucial that refugee families across the country are met with dignity and respect during the most vulnerable time of their transition by being able to receive the help they need by settling into a home, finding a job, and learning to speak English. Thanks to the American Agape Foundation, they were able to do exactly that.  

This year, the American Agape Foundation is notably recognized for their pop-up food pantry in partnership with Eco Centro, a local non-profit, which helped to support the families in their nine affordable housing developments who were struggling throughout the pandemic. In their four food distribution programs, the American Agape Foundation distributed over 500 boxes of food containing fresh produce, rice, beans, and more. Dorthy Winfield, program director for Agape, said, “Food is so important, so we have really been working on making sure people have access to it.” While mass food distribution services exist throughout the country since the pandemic began, these small-scale pop-up pantries play an equally significant role to ensure the city’s most vulnerable residents have access to food and grocery.   

In a new initiative, Starr has set up Agape Community Sports Services, a new 501(c)3 non-profit organization which is focused on revitalizing green space, public parks, and sports fields to provide more children programs and opportunities to play. Their first development, which was recently announced, will be in Long Island, New York in partnership with Prospect Sports Partners. The park will be called DestinationKP and will feature 10 state-of-the-art outdoor turf playing fields and a 65,000 sqft indoor sports building. The park, which will serve as the headquarters for the non-profit, is set to serve more than 1,000,000 people each year and provide programs to thousands of children who would not otherwise have an opportunity to participate in youth sports. 

David Starr’s American Agape Foundation as well as Agape Community Sports Services have been and will continue to be model examples of how non-profits can change communities for the better.

Media Contact
Company Name: Agape Community Sports Services, Inc.
Contact Person: Dorthy Winfield, BA
Email: Send Email
Phone: 210-341-8097
Address:7334 Blanco Road, Suite 200
City: San Antonio
State: TX 78216
Country: United States
Website: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanAgapeFoundation/


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