Evans-Shabazz: 'The resources that UPS brings to our community with this funding to Change Happens will help increase youth opportunities'

The UPS Foundation selected UPS employee and community volunteer Roderick Brown as this year’s annual winner of a $10,000 grant. Brown picked Change Happens, a Houston-based nonprofit led by chief executive Helen Stagg that serves youth through programs to educate, provide health care services and housing displaced families. On April 22 at the annual Spring Breakfast event, Brown presented Stagg with the grant money.

“With funding from the UPS Foundation, Change Happens will be able to expand resources and supports to empower young people to expand educational opportunities, to gain access to health care resources and to prepare for future success,” Stagg said, according to changehappenstx.org.

Council member Dr. Carolyn Evans-Shabazz also spoke at the Spring Breakfast event.

“The resources that UPS brings to our community with this funding to Change Happens will help increase youth opportunities for educational excellence and access to health care,” Evans-Shabazz said. “I am especially pleased that the Third Ward community and my constituents will benefit through the Kids’ University and Children’s Health Day programs. I commend Roderick Brown of UPS for his tireless efforts to support our community and expand opportunities for our youth to succeed.”

Change Happens plans to disperse one portion of the grant money to Children’s Health Day, which prepares young people for a new school year alongside back-to-school activities. The second portion of the grant money will go to Kids’ University, a program that hosts youth on the University of Houston campus to motivate them to seek higher education.

UPS supports volunteerism with charitable giving, according to its website. The American-based multinational corporation committed to 30 million volunteer hours by 2030, which is a steppingstone toward the goal of improving the well-being of one billion lives by 2040.