KILLEEN, Texas — Garden of Hope, a Central Texas foster agency who has served over 5,000 children and families, is losing the lease on its ranch and has to move out by Aug. 31.
Tina Capito, COO of Garden of Hope Central Texas, spoke to 6 News on the issue.
"The ranch is in a trust with the state, and we were subleasing it. And unfortunately, just a couple of days ago, we found out that the ranch lease had been terminated and that we needed to be out by August 31," she said.
Garden of Hope provides a safe and loving environment for foster care children in their time of need, and has an emergency shelter, a long term residential facility and a child placement agency.
"We were not expecting it. We knew that the ranch was going to change some hands at the state level, but this is way far above what anything we would, you know, be involved in," she said. "So we are going to transition back to our Salado facility and get it up and running again."
While all of their children are currently in foster homes and safe, this is a big loss to the organization and the services they provide. The Salado property the foster agency is moving back to does not have the facilities the ranch had, and now Garden of Hope is left with the challenge of raising money to build two structures on their Salado property to accommodate their services.
"We're going to have to raise about $300,000 to get this to happen. So it is going to definitely take the community's help in getting it done," Capito said.
The organization is calling for the community to support but help to the agency does not have to be monetary to make a difference.
"Help does not have to be monetary. We're going to need electricians, we're going to need septic, we're going to need just any and everything to get these this building back up and running, so we are just looking for the community to support," Capito added.
The foster agency is looking for individuals, companies and anyone who wants to come out and help. Garden of Hope has organized a moving day for the ranch, Saturday, Aug. 24 and invites the community to help out. The link to sign up can be found here.
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