This is not how the iconic SHAPE Community Center’s founders and supporters envisioned its 55th anniversary year going. But a fire ravaged roughly 80% of the inside of SHAPE’s 3815 Live Oak location.
Yet, true to form for the resilient community champion and SHAPE executive director and co-founder Deloyd Parker, the Third Ward anchor institution will “build back better,” and it will do so with the help of its many community partners.
Parker spoke with the Defender, providing an update on the fire damage and, more importantly, the work SHAPE will engage in to move forward and rise from the ashes.
Community ask
“We want the community to keep in tune with SHAPE by checking our website at SHAPE.org and getting updates on what we are doing,” said Parker. “We’re gonna ask the community to call us and come by and get some marching orders so they’ll know what they can do. Because everybody will be able to do something. What you do will be based on what you’re able to do, whether it’s financial, whether it’s volunteering, whether it’s helping us to get our 3903 Almeda Harambee Building in a condition where we can pass inspections for children’s programming.”
He also gave specifics to what happened to SHAPE.
The damage
“SHAPE Center obviously just went through a devastating experience at our Family Center, 38 15 Live Oak, we had a major fire, and a lot of the interior of the building has been destroyed,” shared Parker. “And the community needs to know. We owe it to our community to let them know exactly what happened.
“It was an electrical fire and it destroyed most of the interior of the building. The pictures on the wall, the furniture, the computer labs, a lot of it was destroyed. But what it did not destroy is our memory and our resolve,” said Parker, who admitted with full transparency and courage that the fire was the most devastating thing he has experienced in his life.
The recent community meeting, held in Our Park, the park adjacent to SHAPE’s Live Oak location, was to let attendees know that SHAPE Center is not gone.
Moving forward
“SHAPE has not been destroyed. Some of the material things in there were destroyed, but SHAPE will continue,” said Parker. “We are gonna build back better and we are gonna ask the community to join us in doing that.”
Part of that process involves assessing the damage, work that has already begun. Much of SHAPE’s day-to-day operations have also been moved to its Harambee Building (3903 Almeda Rd., Houston 77004). But as Parker told the Defender, several community-serving organizations have been impacted by the damage to SHAPE.
“It’s important to note that when something happens to SHAPE, it happens to the community. Everybody’s impacted by what happens to SHAPE, good or bad. As a result of that fire, many groups are meeting at SHAPE, the Association of Black Social Workers, the Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Grieving mothers, volunteer community service, the restaurant, and more, all those activities; many cannot operate at that facility anymore” he said.
Parker was emphatic when he said SHAPE is not closed, but rather still operating.
“When COVID came, we didn’t close down. We just shifted gears and we did what we normally do in a different way. But we did not stop because had we stopped during COVID, there would not be a SHAPE today. You have to change how you do what you do so you can continue doing what you need to do,” he said.
About SHAPE
SHAPE Community Center was founded by “the community” in 1969 because Houston’s Civil Rights Movement needed a place that could give birth to the programs, that would give meaning to their protests. Today, SHAPE is fondly called “The United Nations of the Hood,” for bringing together people of varied affiliations, for the improvement of the collective. In SHAPE, the Pan-African community finds a distinctive environment which provides a culturally safe space, free from the stigma and trauma of historical exclusion and oppression in an imbalanced power structure.
Ways to donate and/or volunteer
Online
Visit www.shape.org.
By mail
Mail a check or money order made out to SHAPE Community Center
Memo: Restoration Campaign
P. O. Box 8428
Houston, TX 77288 – 8428
In-person
SHAPE Harambee Admin Bldg 3903 Almeda Rd., 77004
M-F 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Sat 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Zelle
832-274-2124
