Community Relations
OutSmart Magazine 
"Open Arms"
March 2008
What do you get when you combine a group of dedicated Houstonians -- including a former dancer-turned educator/ developer, a busy Texas mom involved with myriad nonprofit boards, a Harvard-trained attorney, a bed-and- breakfast proprietor with public-relations expertise, and one of the original HIV medical experts -- with a renegade Catholic priest in Mexico? You get Brazos Abiertos, an innovative new HIV clinic and educational resource for the residents of the Yucatan peninsula.
Betty Confidential.com 
"A Haiku A Day Keeps the Fertility Specialist Away"
Just when you thought all you could do was
blog away your pain - how about haiku?
Introducing the 1st International Infertility
Haiku Competition!
That's right - now you can take those
bundled up emotions and churn out a
three-line ditty that'll express what you think
and feel about that whole darned Getting
Pregnant Process. Sponsored by My
Fertility Plan, there are categories for both the silly and the serious,
because after all, like they say in their contest announcement,
"Infertility sucks."
Nurses Lounge Magazine 
December 2007
"A New Era in Harris County"
Following Elizabeth Cloyd down the hallway
of Ben Taub General Hospital is a slow process.
Every few yards, she’s stopped by yet another
staff member who wants to give her a
hug. In turn, she introduces each by name and
anecdotes.
With her quick and ready smile, she may not
appear to be a leader in a revolution, but Elizabeth
Cloyd, MBA, RN is just that – an agent for
change.
"A Down-to-Earth Astronaut's Wife"
When there’s talk of “stars” in the suburbs
southeast of Houston, the conversations are
often more about celestial bodies than celebrities.
Candi Mastracchio, RN lives particularly
close to the stars
– her husband,
Rick Mastracchio,
is an astronaut.
Read entire issue of Nurses Lounge Magazine...
Houston Community News Online
The Villager, 2007
Quoted Source -- Northwoods mission: Woodlands, Spring missionaries visit Honduras
By Deborah Rowe
A group of unlikely "missionaries" had a life-changing experience recently in Honduras.
Individuals from the Spring and Woodlands area gathered in Tegucigalpa in mid-July at Clinica Cristiana Cuerpo de Cristo to deliver food, clothing, shoes and medical services in the remote mountain villages of the country's interior.
The initiators of the trip, Lynn Rippelmeyer and Joy George, are members of Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Church in the Woodlands. Further, folks from the church are sometimes practitioners of other faiths, church member Tracy Morris said.
"For example, I am Buddhist. The range of faiths at Unitarian Universalist churches in general is such that we had some atheists, certainly agnostics and some deists," she said. "Our host in Honduras is a Christian mission. Many of the Honduran residents we were serving are Catholic, a faith which is defined by the reps from the mission as 'not Christian.'"
Morris went on this trip because she loves to travel and is always looking for ways to combine travel and her work as a writer. "I told Lynn Rippelmeyer that if she needed a former social worker who speaks a bit of Spanish on the journey, I'd be happy to go," Morris said.
The visuals were breathtaking. Tegucigalpa, where the group stayed at the His Eyes clinic, is a city made up mostly of crowded, cinderblock shanties sprawling along hillsides. A lot of color everywhere, from the lush native "weeds" to the carefully tended gardens to the cinderblock buildings painted pink and aqua and green, Morris said. "Tegucigalpa is surrounded by mountains. Traveling in the mountains was inspiring," she said. "Beyond a few paved highways between the city and the mountains, the roads going up the mountains are unpaved and rocky. It took us many hours to travel a few miles."
Little Red Schoolhouse
Press Release, 2003
Sample -- In Spite of Neighborly Corporate Invasion, Local School Thrives
Ah, progress. Love it or hate it, tolerate it or fight it -- it is inevitable, especially in Houston. It's a city that never seems to stop growing and revitalizing. That's a good thing. Still, sometimes it's hard to find the "win-win" in developing situations. Even champions of change know that compromise and concessions typically abound. Just ask the folks at Little Red Schoolhouse in the Meyerland area.
The established private Montessori school has been contending with the good and bad of neighborhood progress for some time now. Initially established in 1960 and located on the edges of the then-premier Westbury Square, the owners and staff packed up and moved in 1994 to their present location in the Maplewood Square Shopping Center at 9730 Hillcroft. Since that time, enrollment has fluctuated along with the area's population yet always remained steady enough to keep its doors open to children from age 18 months to middle school years.
Body Positive Houston
Positively Magazine, 1995
Sample -- Women's HIV Coalition
When government funding and bureaucracy appear to dictate how the needs of HIV positive people will be met, the formation and development of the Women's HIV Coalition (WHIVC) in Houston is one example of grassroots efficacy and success.
The Women's HIV Coalition, a special project of Body Positive, is currently under going re-structuring in order to better serve its members and the community. The Coalition is utilizing a modified version of a model presented by the group's 1995 intern from the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work, Thad McLemore.
"Several members had expressed some reservations about the capacity of the organization to take on new projects," reports McLemore. "A model was proposed which should relieve some of the stress and avoid burnout of members by more specifically assigning tasks, like allowing each member to focus primarily on her particular area of interest."
After several weeks of discussion, Coalition members voted to move forward with the structural changes, which should be fully functional by February 1996, after the group's second annual conference.
