Greater Waco Legal Services
Greater Waco Legal Services: Cultural Wealth Solid Gold Neighbor
Krista Brinser, Assistant Director, Community Relations
Greater Waco Legal Services (GWLS) was founded in 2017 to provide legal services that give individuals opportunities to grow healthier, further their education, and experience financial security. GWLS plays a significant role in creating lasting solutions to complex and systemic problems through strategic partnerships, including the Medical-Legal Partnership with the Family Health Center and the School-Legal Partnership with Transformation Waco and Grassroots Community Development.When asked about his why he invests his time in Greater Waco Legal Services, Kent McKeever, GWLS founder, replied, "MY clients. No doubt about it. I am honored to know each one of my clients. I love getting to build relationships with them because I learn so much about life, hope, God, and love through them, whether they realize it or not! They teach me so much about perseverance, resilience, and dignity in the face of overwhelming obstacles, oppression, and dehumanization...[We] provide such a needed service in this community. It's an honor and a privilege to be doing this work in Waco-McLennan County right now. There are so many wonderful things going on here, and I am thrilled to be a part of it!"
Today, Kent is excited to see where Waco blooms over the next few years. When asked, why Waco? He responded, "Waco’s amazing, hard-working, compassionate people are learning together to not shy away from complex, difficult, and deeply ingrained community-wide, systemic issues. And instead of seeing them as problems, we see them as opportunities to do something vitally important for our community and our world. I love that so many Wacoans with various forms of power are coming together, starting to listen to the stories and see the struggles of our neighbors. As we listen, we are learning to persist and persevere with them, to join in solidarity with those who suffer in our community, and to be led to the edges. And it's from these edges we find our way together into a more collectively vibrant, beautiful, and flourishing future."
This fall, students enrolled in Baylor's Philanthropy and the Public Good course were able to see the passion and impact Kent and his team at GWLS provides for the Waco community. Tasked with acting as a board, student evaluated and awarded grant money to philanthropies aligned with Baylor's Solid Gold Neighbor initiative within Waco. Through a rigorous grant selection process, the class chose to honor Greater Waco Legal Services as one of its six recipients. Greater Waco Legal Services received $15,000 to further serve their clientele.