One of our primary goals for Peoplestown residents is economic stability. A big part of this is financial literacy. Through our programs like Supports for Success, we connect individuals and families with partner agencies to provide services, educational support, and financial literacy training.

In honor of National Financial Literacy Month, we’d like to share a new partnership with PNC Bank. PNC uses Mobile Banking Units (MBUs) to extend essential banking services into low and moderate-income communities. In addition to banking services, MBUs provide financial education for homebuyers and money management strategies to help reduce residents’ reliance on high-fee check cashing and predatory lending.

The PNC truck is on the Emmaus House campus every Tuesday morning from 9:00 am - 11:00 am, offering all the services and benefits of a mobile branch. 

Financial Stability Starts At Home

We recently revised our strategic plan to focus on three priorities:

• Creating a ladder to economic opportunity that leads to household stability

• Providing multigenerational education that supports economic mobility for the next generation

• Optimizing Emmaus House assets for increased community impact

We’re proud to partner with organizations and companies that prioritize education and access over profits. Economic opportunity can come from many places, but to achieve stability, financial literacy is essential. 

At Emmaus House, our first strategic priority is creating a ladder to economic opportunity for residents that leads to economic stability. Ground zero for this effort is our Muriel Lokey Center. 

The Lokey Help Center offers a wide range of services, from emergency financial assistance to SNAP applications, GA ID vouchers, and mail services. It also houses the Emmaus House Food Pantry. 

In addition to the services it offers, the Lokey Help Center also serves as a hub of opportunity for the community, connecting residents to various resources and services in the area.

A New Chapter

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve recently hired a new Director of Economic Opportunity! Using the Lokey Help Center as a base of operations, David-Lee Mattison will guide the execution of our priority to foster economic opportunity and financial stability among residents. 

David-Lee has more than two decades of experience working with unhoused individuals, as well as providing HIV prevention education and risk-reduction counseling services. He’s a certified National Behavioral Interventions Trainer for the Center of Disease Control (CDC) and the Georgia Department of Health.

“As the Director of Economic Opportunity,” David-Lee says, “I am excited to contribute to the forward-thinking Emmaus House. My years of experience working as a director and providing case management to neighbors and community members facing housing and food insecurities has given me the tools I need to be successful.”

David-Lee is inspired by this quote from Mother Teresa: “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”  

Please join us in welcoming David-Lee to the team!

With Easter and Holy Week now behind us, we’ve been thinking a lot about Emmaus House’s legacy of faith. A mission of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, Emmaus House was founded in 1967 by Father Austin Ford, an Episcopal priest and civil rights advocate. 

The name “Emmaus House” refers to the Easter story in which two disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus (north of Jerusalem). In this story, the resurrected Jesus walks alongside them but disguises himself. He listens to them speak about all that has happened, and only later reveals himself to them as they are breaking bread together.

Faith In Action

There are a lot of things one could take away from this story, but one is the idea of God’s revelation coming through fellowship. There had been plenty of opportunities for Jesus to reveal himself along the road: while they were discussing the Messiah and the meaning of all that had happened. But he chose this moment of simple hospitality and kindness. 

Faith is one idea that draws us together into a blessed community, but it’s in caring for one another that God is ultimately revealed.

Church On The Move

In April each year, Emmaus House hosts a special service exploring the Stations of the Cross. We do not do so from within the walls of our chapel, but by going out into our Peoplestown community and visiting sites where residents have fought against racism and the destructive effects of police brutality, expressways, urban renewal, stadium projects, white flight, and gentrification.

At Emmaus House, we believe that we are all created in the image of God. So as we visit each of these sites, we consider how the themes of justice and mercy reflect the story of Christ in the Stations of the Cross. We ask ourselves, “Who is Jesus here?”

Everyday Faith

We’re proud of our legacy of faith, and while we appreciate traditional expressions such as the proclamation of God’s word and the celebration of the Eucharist, we recognize its most profound expression is living as Christ lived: among the people, for the people, with infinite love. 

Click below to learn more about our legacy of faith and the Emmaus House Chapel.

The Southside Works Fellowship is a program established by Emmaus House and the Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency (ACSS) to learn more about youth employment and entrepreneurship needs on the southside of Atlanta. 

The Right Person For The Job

We believe that the people most qualified to speak on youth needs and opportunities are youth. The Southside Works Fellowship is designed to explore these issues from the inside by directly engaging with those we wish to serve. 

For this position, we sought a young person with strong connections to the southside to assess and recommend on current programming efforts, coordinate with community leaders, and leverage social media—along with other engagement strategies—to connect with and serve local youth.

We’re very proud to introduce our first Southside Fellow, Apple Inman.

In It Together

At Emmaus House, we recognize that engaged service isn’t just about providing opportunity; it’s about meeting people where they are and working with a shared sense of purpose. We look forward to working with Apple to better serve our southside youth.

When we discuss the barriers that women face, we talk a lot about income inequality and achievement gaps—and these are important. One thing we don’t talk about enough, however, is period poverty.

The Problem Is Widespread

A 2019 study found that two-thirds of women with low income were unable to afford period products during the previous year. Every month, approximately one in three low-income women have to miss school, work, or other outings because they cannot afford period supplies. 

This is a major barrier to opportunity, yet most states still tax the sale of feminine hygiene products and offer far too few programs to make these items available to women with low income.

We Can Do This

As a society, we owe it to ourselves to fix the systemic issues that create income inequality and achievement gaps. One thing we can do right now, however, is solve period poverty in our communities.

At Emmaus House, our food pantry is stocked with many necessary staples, including feminine hygiene items.

You can help us solve period poverty in our community by donating items on Mondays and Fridays from 9-2:30 p.m. We also accept financial contributions.

Click below to learn more about how you can support the Emmaus House food pantry.

At Emmaus House, we believe in the power of female role models. Our out-of-school program, Youth on the Move (YOTM), provides middle and high school students with enrichment opportunities, empowering experiences, as well as qualified mentors, many of whom are women.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we asked a few of our students to describe a woman they look up to, as well as some of the ways this person has inspired them.

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Diamond, 11th grade

"I look up to my after school teacher, Ms. Ti, because she always has a positive outlook on any situation, no matter how difficult it is. She inspires me to be more positive, mindful, and caring. She also encourages me to never give up on my dreams, because, through hard work, anything is possible. Honestly, I believe that if the world had more people like her, it would be a better place. "

India, 9th grade

"I look up to Melanie Martinez (singer) because of her background and her style. Her background is basically how the kids at my school are today. They put her down, talked about her looks, and told her she would never become a singer. Now she has proven them wrong by becoming a celebrity. All of her songs have a meaning I can relate to. I love her so much."

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At Emmaus House, we recognize the many ways—both big and small—that extraordinary women have impacted our work, our mission, and our lives. We’re proud to see that our youth recognize it too.

In 1967, when Emmaus House was founded, the Peoplestown community was suffering population loss and disinvestment due to urban renewal policies, interstate construction, and white rejection of residential racial integration. 

As times change, these challenges have given way to others; redevelopment projects and gentrification around Georgia State Stadium and the Atlanta BeltLine threaten to displace many legacy residents and renters. 

Our mission is the same, but as circumstances shift, so must our strategies.

New Priorities

We recently revised our strategic plan to focus on three priorities:

• Creating a ladder to economic opportunity that leads to economic stability

• Providing multigenerational education that supports economic mobility for the next generation

• Optimizing Emmaus House assets for increased community impact

To learn more about our strategic priorities and our plans for implementing them, check out our website by clicking below.

In honor of Black History Month and Women's History Month, we wanted to recognize one of the early pillars of our community, Ms. Ethel Mae Mathews. 

Born in Alabama and married by the age of twelve, Ms. Mathews moved to Peoplestown in 1950 with her four children. She met Emmaus House Founder Father Austin Ford in the street one day in 1967. Father Ford convinced her to attend a welfare rights meeting. She would spend the rest of her life advocating for and championing her community.
 

A Lifetime of Activism

Ms. Mathews headed Emmaus House’s first Welfare Rights Committee and went on to serve as Chairwoman of the Peoplestown Advisory Council, President of the Welfare Rights Organization, and a board member for both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger.

Known for her courage and character, Ms. Mathews could often be found at pickets and protests advocating for her Peoplestown neighbors. She helped secure better leasing agreements and improved property conditions from the Atlanta Housing Authority, and she took a stand against the Olympic Stadium, ultimately developing ways that its presence could benefit surrounding neighborhoods. In the 1980s, she physically blocked a set of bulldozers from razing the Peoplestown Community Center.

These are just a few standout moments pulled from a lifetime of activism.

Committed to Love

Ms. Mathews was a fierce idealist. The Atlanta History Center’s profile on her is titled, “Unwavering, Unyielding, Uncompromising.” However, at the center of all that Ms. Mathews did was a love for her community and a commitment to faith and justice. 

“I’m rich with many things,” she once said. “Not with money, but with courage, with strength, with faith, with independence, with my belief in God, and that makes me very rich.”

At Emmaus House, we strive every day to live up to Ms. Mathews’s ideals and legacy.
 

Emmaus House was founded during a time of immense political upheaval, activism, and change. As we celebrate Black History Month, we’ve been thinking about how that history of activism and advocacy carries through today.

One Voice

As an organization dedicated to serving the residents of Peoplestown and surrounding areas, community is the heart of what we do. In many ways, our community is a product of the Civil Rights Movement and the activism of the 50s and 60s. After all, what is activism if not the drawing together of many voices into one—a unified demand for change? 

The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in bringing together people who, prior to that, had often been silenced, marginalized, and isolated. In that sense, it served as the foundation of a new community—of many new communities—and is a legacy we carry with us today.

Community and Responsibility

At Emmaus House, we harness the power of community, education, hope, and love to dismantle poverty, racism, and other barriers to opportunity in the lives and communities we serve. The power of any community, however, lies in its willingness to engage with one another and lift each other up. Community is a privilege, but it’s also a responsibility. 

We’re so grateful to be surrounded by neighbors who are willing to strengthen one another, and, when necessary, demand change.