Community Family Centers hosting 'Couch Potato Gala' to help neighbors in need

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- ABC13 and Community Family Centers invite you to be a couch potato this Sunday and watch the 2020 Emmy Awards for a good cause.

This year, Community Family Centers' annual gala is going virtual and you can help your neighbors in need of food, job assistance and access to educational resources from the best seat in the house... your house.

Visit the link above to make a donation to Community Family Centers, and then tune in to ABC13 on Sunday night to catch "On the Red Carpet," followed by the 72nd Emmy Awards, hosted by "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" host Jimmy Kimmel.

CFC was founded in 1972 to provide community-based social and education services to our city's most underserved neighbors. Each year, the organization helps more than 40,000 clients in Houston's East End.

On Tuesday at 7 p.m., CFC's CEO Maritza Guerrero will join Eyewitness News anchor Elissa Rivas for a town hall, exploring the consequences of the academic achievement gap for students of color, especially in the Hispanic community.

RELATED: ABC13 to host town hall on educational inequality for Hispanic students

On average, Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind white students of the same age, according to researchers at McKinsey & Company, affecting their future wages, health and even rates of incarceration.

"If you have a large population that has lower levels of education, you cannot fill jobs," Guerrero said. "You then continue to appropriate and perpetuate the poverty that is there in the (Hispanic) community, and you also perpetuate economic inequality."

As a provider of early childhood and adult education services, Guerrero said results seen at CFC leads her to believe the achievement gap can be closed for students of color.

"We've seen that when children have a good start with reading and math, they will achieve throughout the years and they will, within one generation, break the cycle of poverty," Guerrero said.

Guerrero told Eyewitness News that CFC is working overtime in the midst of the pandemic to help connect East End families with affordable access to fresh and healthy food, after-school programs, job opportunities, and recreational activities for youth.

The Couch Potato Gala is sponsored by Hal and Debbie Sharp; Gonzalez Law Group; I.A. Naman + Associates, Inc.; Tom and Shari Fish; Randy Lowrance; McCarthy Building Companies; Joe and Stephanie Wong; Ben Johanneman; John and Janet Hill; Cliff and Carol Pearson Family Charity; and Office of James Burnett Landscaping.