Mission and History

For 110 years, the organization now known as the Center for Transforming Lives (CTL) has provided anti-poverty programs for women and children in Tarrant County. It was founded in 1907 as the first YWCA™ in Texas serving as a boarding house for poor women, expanded to include child care for working mothers in the 1930s, and in 2015 changed its name from the YWCA Fort Worth & Tarrant County to the Center for Transforming Lives to more clearly articulate its mission.

Today, the Center for Transforming Lives lifts women with children from poverty to possibility through:

• Safe Homes – an on-site homeless shelter for women and off-site homes for families.
• Early Childhood Education – providing free or subsidized early childhood education to impoverished and homeless families.
• Financial Stability – individual financial coaching and other programs to promote financial self-sufficiency.

Under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Carol Klocek, the Center for Transforming Lives has an annual operating budget of more than $7 million and will serve 3,500 low-income and homeless women, children and families this year, breaking the cycle of poverty.

For more than 100 years, transforming lives has been out mission.