A friendly and caring group, the Palacios Community Hub in Edna recently celebrated a successful first year in Jackson County with a free lunch for anyone welcome. Executive Director Emily Fagan-Baker, out of Palacios, attended the bash and shared a little about the group’s past, and their vision for the future.
In 2024, PCH in Palacios was experiencing their 10-year anniversary, just two years after one of their biggest achievements, winning All-American City.
“Each year the nationals civically choose a theme, and in 2022 it was Housing as a Platform,” Fagan-Baker said. “We thought it a perfect opportunity, because I was already doing a study on how we were serving people in public housing and how to get them out.”
Housing as a platform is a concept which views housing not only as physical shelter, but as a resource to deliver opportunities that can improve people’s lives. The idea is that stable housing serves as a starting point to address other needs, like health, education and financial stability.
“What we do at PCH is anything and everything that anyone in a rural community would have to travel out of town to get to, or doesn’t have access to,” Fagan-Baker explained. “In Palacios we do a free legal aid, a crisis center, we have a Wellesley nurse on site and we do all kinds of mental and physical health, English as a second language… all the things. We want to bring that to Jackson County.
“What drew us here is the fact that there’s a Friends of Elder Citizens here, so people are familiar with that concept. We serve four counties and each one is very different with different needs.”
PCH had planned on rolling out in Jackson County much slower than it did, due to a funder which could assist with a 25% growth over the next three years.
Fagan-Baker said their long-term goal is to have someone local running Edna’s PCH because they know the county best.
The idea of the Hub is to have people go to them because they know the staff.
“If someone comes and says they want to start something, I just say yes to whatever,” she said.
“We’re working on getting Workforce Solutions in here, and we found in Palacios if you have more than one thing under one roof, people will come from one thing and learn about another.”
The Palacios Community Hub hosts a non-profit gathering every first Wednesday in Victoria, and they try to visit every rural community in the surrounding counties.
For Jackson County, the niche is sustainable living, so the PCH teaches several series on how people can make their money stretch at the grocery store, or how to cook or grow the right foods. And they’ve just received money to expand on their services further, to add groups for diabetes, mental health, recovery, plus programs for the young ones as well.
“We have Books and Beyond on Monday afternoons, and we’re also starting a crochet and knitting group,” Fagan-Baker said.
“We’ve also got something big in the works, which is a curriculum program for juveniles. We don’t want them to just serve time, we can offer a program to identify why what happened, happened, or to make better choices, and how to live a successful life.”
In addition, they have one for the parent side as well, called Raising Highly Capable Kids. The group looks at how one was parented, how one is parenting and what would be the best way for a parent and child to be parenting.
The Palacios Community Hub can be found on Facebook to learn all their activities, and they also have a website, palacioshub. org, which is available but will be revamped soon due to their quick growth, and will contain links for each county a PCH can be found. They are located at 901 South Wells St, or call them at 361-759-3441.
