Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Jones.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Steven. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I graduated from Trinity High School in 2009: the same year 6 Stones was founded. After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from Southwestern University in 2012, I moved back to DFW and began chasing a career in broadcast radio. Within a year, I had a weekend shift at a heritage station in the market. As much as I loved the radio world, something about it didn’t feel right. I wanted to be more involved and impactful, to contribute to the community where I worked.
So I reached out to 6 Stones and pitched them on creating a new position: a Storyteller. Three years later, I still have that title…. but I’m running all of our digital communications (videography, photography, blog content, email, and social media content, etc.) and an intramural soccer league. It’s a privilege and a joy to be able to give back to the community that raised me and to work in an office across the street from my Alma Mater, and I’m grateful for every day that I get to go to work.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I came in as a Part-Time employee and had a sort of “prove yourself” period in the final months of 2015. At the time, I was just responsible for finding and writing stories; every now and again I helped with grant writing. The job grew to include video and photo content, and I sort of had to learn camera skills on the fly. Those early videos are so rough that I almost want to delete them from the site, but we’ve found a groove in the last year or so, and I’m proud of our content now. Part of the difficulty of inventing a job is that you really have to learn as you go, and we’re still determining what our audience really wants to see and know about us. But there’s a certain magic to the HEB community, and it helps that I was born and raised here.
The intramural soccer league was the same way: I inherited a program that most people didn’t even realize we ran and took it from a $2,500 line-item to a $10,000 program that is actually worth closer to $40k. We’ve grown the league from around 100 students to nearly 140, and our players (most of whom qualify for free/reduced lunch and several of whom are homeless) consistently outperform peers from their demographic background in grades, behavior, and attendance. Last year, they missed half as many days of school.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with 6 Stones Mission Network – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
6 Stones is a collaborative nonprofit designed to bring social sectors together to tackle needs and obstacles in our community. We work with governments, schools, churches, businesses, and others to identify and solve all kinds of problems: we currently have programs that provide food and clothing to people in need, home repairs for disadvantaged men and women whose houses have fallen out of code, school supplies and Christmas for at-risk kids, and community engagement across the mid-cities.
It’s the collaborative nature of our approach that sets us apart: we know which kids need help because the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District identifies them for us. Homeowners qualify for support through their city’s Code Enforcement division, and we actually contract with those cities to complete the work. Because we mobilize volunteers for most of those repairs, our partner cities see up to a 300% Return on Investment. And our food pantry, which serves about 12,000 people in our community, also helps to feed close to a million people all around the metroplex thanks to the Food Share Partners program and a recent partnership with Midwest Food Bank.
If you were, to sum up, our work, it comes down to helping people be good neighbors again; we believe that everyone has something to offer and that, if we work together, we can make our community better and learn to love each other more in the process.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Most of our programs have been finalized and run with incredible efficiency, so we’ve spent the last few years helping other communities replicate them and bringing in new city partners. While we focus on Hurst, Euless, and Bedford, we’re in negotiations to bring the Community Powered Revitalization program to some of our neighboring cities and have held home repair events in Watauga, Richland Hills, Arlington, Everman, and Cleburne. We’ve restored over 600 homes in this area since 2009, including 200+ in Euless and over 100 in Bedford.
Our school-based initiatives serve roughly half of the at-risk student population in our district, so there’s room to grow there as our resources increase. That’s especially true of our soccer league, which serves 4 of the five junior high schools in HEB ISD and stands to add the final school within the next few years.
2019 will mark our ten-year anniversary, so we’re planning on something special, but we don’t have details there yet.
Pricing:
- $35 – provide school supplies and a backpack for an at-risk student in HEB ISD
- $65 – sponsor Christmas for an at-risk student in HEB ISD
- $2,500 – restore a home for someone who is physically and financially unable to safely maintain their house
Contact Info:
- Address: 209 N Industrial Blvd #241, Bedford, TX 76021
- Website: www.6stones.org
- Phone: (817) 868-7400
- Email: info@6stones.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/6stones/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/6stones/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/6stones
Image Credit:
Cody Bettis
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
