Cheryl Pooler, a lecturer at Baylor University and a 2019 St. Thomas Doctorate of Social Work (DSW) graduate, was granted $2.3 million in November for her nonprofit, The Cove, which helps homeless teenagers in Waco, Texas.
Pooler is the cofounder of The Cove, which stands for care, opportunity, value and empowerment. The program offers mental health professionals, pet therapy, family reunification and exercise programs to homeless teenagers. Pooler said the grant money will go to food, therapy and creating housing solutions.
“I think (the DSW Program is) probably one of the things that helped us get the grants,” Pooler said. “We are on the front end instead of the back end of what it’s going to take to end youth homelessness.”
The problem of youth homelessness is widespread across the United States as it is reported that over 700,000 unaccompanied minors experience homelessness.
“I think one of the issues is that they often are coming from sort of my thoughts, pretty my thoughts coming from like generational poverty,” Instructor of Social Work and Intern Supervisor at The Bridge for Youth Lisa Borneman said. “When (youth) come into services, a lot of times that first thing that they need is that safety and security and food.”
Pooler said that The Cove works tirelessly to help teenagers get off of the streets by providing a safe space to go from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday.
“We can help students move beyond the school-to-prison pipeline,” Pooler said. “The Cove is that place where the youth can come and get what they’re not getting from a parent.”
Getting accepted for the federal grant was not a simple task. The Cove applied for the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, a program by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that only gives a small number of grants to communities each year.
“It’s giving us ways to reach more than just the Waco area,” Pooler said. “It’s giving us funding to take care of the long-term housing needs. We have a short-term shelter, but our users need long-term housing solutions.”
The Cove opened its doors in 2016 but has been doing work in the Waco community since 2012.
“The Cove is kind of a one stop shop, (teenagers) can just take care of everything in that one spot,” Pooler said.
After starting The Cove and being the chairperson for the board, Pooler decided she wanted to go back to school. Pooler wanted to become more of a teacher in social work after working in the field for over 30 years.
“Just because you’re a social worker, and you’ve done social work doesn’t mean you can teach it. You have to understand how to teach it,” Pooler said.
This realization led her to begin looking for schools and she eventually landed on St. Thomas, a mere 1,027 miles from Waco, Texas. Pooler was encouraged by Baylor University’s Dean at the time to join St. Thomas’s DSW program because of its clinical focus.
“I feel like the DSW program really helped me prioritize my teaching skills and made me want to be a better professor,” Pooler said.
Pooler said joining the DSW program came with some challenges, as she had to split her time between the program, her work and being a mother.
“I had to step down from some of the work that I was doing with The Cove on the board because there weren’t enough hours in the day,” Pooler said.
Pooler said it was beneficial that she could relate almost all of her DSW assignments back to her work at The Cove.
“It really made the experience very rewarding,” Pooler said. “It definitely benefited because we know so much more than we would have known had I not done all that work and research.”
Scout Mason can be reached at maso7275@stthomas.edu.