Hope Pregnancy Center is expanding its reach to help women and their partners in the community with the opening of a new STD testing clinic off of East 29th Street in Bryan.
“We are going to call it Testing 4 U,” said Tracy Frank, Executive Director of Hope Pregnancy Centers. “Our logo will be T4U. [When coming up with the name] we thought, ‘Does T4U mean anything in texting language?’ So we looked it up, and T4U stands for Thanks for Understanding. So that is something that we will incorporate — that we understand, that we are not judgmental.”
Hope knew that at some point they would need additional space to expand, since the Brentwood location is reaching capacity. And they knew that with a second location, they did not want to duplicate the same services in two different locations.
“We had had two locations — one in Bryan and one in College Station in the past — but we closed the Bryan location in 2005, because to duplicate exact services really didn’t make any sense. If it is not logical to duplicate service, then what new service could we add,” Frank said. “What we felt wasn’t [being] well covered was enough free access to STD testing and treatment. For many pregnancy centers across the county, the answer has been to offer sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing and treatment services. This made sense [to us], as there is a need in our community for these services; it would expand our reach beyond those women who thought they were pregnant to those who are sexually active.”
Hope Pregnancy Center, Drs. Haywood Robinson and Noreen Johnson with Brazos Medical Associates, Dr. Stuart Quartemont with EZ Lab, and 40 Days for Life, will all co-locate in the building. The building will also serve as the new headquarters for 40 Days for Life. Drs. Robinson and Johnson have been running a pilot STD clinic on Friday afternoons with Hope. During this process they found that a critical need ended up being a vendor to process lab work, and this is when Dr. Quartemont came on board.
“We hope [with the new clinic] that one, we can reach more people. Two, we want to meet people earlier in preventing a crisis pregnancy. By having an STD clinic, we hope to be meeting them at that time before they have a crisis pregnancy. And then beyond that is hope that we can become a trusted resource and be able to do more abstinence counseling and to reach people before they make that decision,” Frank said.
To provide these services free of charge, Hope has always relied on a great volunteer base, but they are always in need of quality volunteers.
“For Hope Pregnancy Center in general, our greatest volunteer need is the peer counselors. You don’t have to have any special background or any special training, we can take care of all that; you just have to have a passion to help serve other people,” Frank said. “The number of clients that we see is directly related to number of volunteers that we have. We don’t have enough staff to cover it, if we don’t have volunteers. We need locals who are going to stay in town, and we also need women and men. We often have the partner of the woman here, and we offer him the opportunity for counseling. [Counseling] is usually accepted, because this is the first time someone is interested to hear his story. Any time we can get more male counselors, that is really good. The theme this year is ‘Everyday Heroes.’ We do want to recruit more volunteers, and you can be an everyday hero by volunteering four hours a week here at the center.”
For those interested in donating to Hope, they have a partner website at partnerwithhope.org. People can donate online or they can mail checks to Hope Pregnancy Center. The whole purchase of the new STD clinic building, was called the Joshua Project, so if people want to contribute to that, they can just mark in the memo line that the donation is for the Joshua Project.
Hope Pregnancy Center has been in the area 30 years, starting out as Brazos Valley Crisis Pregnancy Service in 1985. They are celebrating their 30th year of ministry and service, and have seen over 22,000 unique individuals during that time frame. All of their services are free. And not only do they have options of peer counseling, pregnancy tests, prenatal vitamins, and limited obstetric ultrasound. The parenting education program covers a wide array of topics important for new parents. By participating in classes, parents can earn points to purchase new baby equipment and clothes.
by Lauren Rouse