Peacock Legacy of Hope, or PLH, is a nonprofit organization based in Bryan/College Station that provides a lifeline for single mothers through transitional housing. The organization was birthed out of First Baptist Bryan, who was seeking a way to serve the needs in the community as a congregation. The organization has since developed into its own nonprofit, opening its doors to their first single-mother family in November 2022.
Now the executive director of PLH, Jeremy Palmer came to the Brazos Valley about eight years ago as the mission pastor at First Baptist Bryan. As they began developing the organization, he felt called to leave his position at the church to lead the organization full time.
“We recognize that for most single moms, about 65% of their budget goes to housing,” Jeremy says. “The example I give is that there’s a mom in a swimming pool, and she's doing everything she can to keep her head above water, but she's drowning. A lot of times we'll kneel down on the side of the pool and look over at her drowning and say, ‘let's talk about your budget,’ or ‘let's get you some counseling,’ but all she's trying to do is get that next breath of air.
“What we do at Peacock Legacy is by providing the housing, we allow her to get out of that pool, get in a safe place, and then be able to say, ‘what are your goals? What do you want to achieve? How can we help you do that?’”
PLH currently has two duplexes to accommodate four single-mom families at a time. Each family lives on the site for an extended period of time, which varies depending on their needs and the goals they hope to achieve.
“Our primary candidate that we're looking for is a mother that's really trying as hard as she can, but for one reason or another she's running into speed bumps or roadblocks in her life and she needs somebody to give her a hand up,” Jeremy says. “Instead of being a cookie cutter program, we really want to assess her goals and how we can assist in those, so it can vary from six months to evenup to two years.”
While involved with the nonprofit, single moms are paired up with other mothers who serve as mentors — PLH calls this support program “moms helping moms” or M&Ms for short.
“The moms meet weekly with their M&MS who are there to provide friendship, support and encouragement,” Jeremy says. “The goal is to create hope, because if you don’t have any hope that you can succeed, life is just going to feel like failure after failure rather than a journey of ups and downs.”
Jeremy says that with the support of the community, PLH hopes to build eight to 10 more duplexes of various sizes to accommodate more families.
“One of the reasons why it's so hard for there to be ministries that provide housing is because of the facility costs,” Jeremy says. “It's expensive to build and expensive to maintain, so it's hard for people to pull that off. What we've seen is that when the community responds with what they have, and the skills they have, and the abilities they have, we can do it. It doesn't have to be super expensive, because each person contributing all together makes a big difference.”
The nonprofit is always open to partnering with churches and other organizations to strengthen their reach. There are also many opportunities for small businesses and individuals to donate their time and resources.
“Bryan/College Station is a special place, and it's been a huge blessing,” Jeremy says. “There are a lot of people who care, but I think the challenge is, they often don't know how to help. We want to provide that vehicle for people to help in a constructive and uplifting way, and we've had a really good response from community partners, small businesses and others who have donated materials and services for the buildings.”
“I think a lot of people have been touched by a single mom, whether they were raised by one, or have seen their sister, daughter or friend walk through those challenges,” Jeremy says. “We provide a way for people to support us through their business, finances or volunteering, and really make a difference in these women and children’s lives.”
For more information on ways to get involved, visit peacocklegacy.org.
