Coastal Bend Community Empowerment is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving communities in Corpus Christi and the surrounding region.
We help residents, neighborhood groups, churches, and community-serving organizations build lasting local leadership and citizen-driven change.
Listening and Discovering
We help communities listen one person, one household, and one block at a time to discover what neighbors care about and what gifts they can bring to shared goals.
Leadership Development
We identify and develop local leaders through coaching, peer learning, and ongoing training so communities can guide their own progress.
Action Team Formation
We organize residents around shared passions and strengths so they can form teams, take action, and improve their neighborhoods together.
Partner Development
We help communities connect with outside partners when additional support is needed for initiatives residents cannot carry out on their own.
What We Do
We organize communities around their own shared vision and collective strengths to create citizen-driven change that matters to them.
Current Efforts
CBCE is currently engaged with three communities. In two, we provide direct training and coaching. In the third, we are equipping a key local leader to serve as the practitioner for her own community.
West Side Neighborhood
The West Side Neighborhood includes approximately 20,000 households, so our work begins one quadrant at a time. Through listening projects and resident-led organizing, neighbors identify shared concerns, discover local strengths, and begin building action teams around what matters most.
Status: Re-emerging
Before the pandemic, a completed block-level listening project helped transform neighbor relationships and led to regular gatherings, stronger connections, and a clearer picture of shared priorities such as safety, beautification, and community coherence.
Homeless Helping Homeless Community
Status: Maintaining
This community grew through regular meetings, shared decision-making, and peer support among people experiencing homelessness. While instability and displacement have made long-term organizing difficult, a committed core group continues to build healthy relationships and work toward a safer, more supportive community.
Today, Peer Advocates meet regularly with shared leadership, and CBCE continues to coach and support their efforts. A listening and discovery report is also being developed to help ensure the community’s voice is represented where local decisions are made.
Costa Tarragona Apartment Home Community
Status: Emerging
CBCE is training a local practitioner who now serves as Activities Director and is helping residents begin a listening project one building at a time. As relationships grow, residents are discovering shared interests, recognizing themselves as a community, and preparing to form action teams around their priorities.
We also coach and train local organizations, agencies, and ministries to use an inside-out, asset-based approach that equips communities to lead their own development.
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Homelessness in the Coastal Bend is not an abstract issue or a headline that fades by morning. It is visible in parks, on sidewalks, in apartment communities under strain, and in the daily choices people make when they are trying to survive without stable housing, safety, or support.