Shape Community Center

Fruit & Vegetable Co-op

Community endeavor bringing families together in a cooperative effort to pool their resources in order to increase their purchasing power of fruits and vegetables.
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Fruit & Vegetable Co-op
Summer Youth Enrichment

Eight-week full day program for school-age children (5-15). The SEP offers many exciting challenges to participating youth. The classes and activities include cultural arts, computer literacy, sports and recreational activities, foreign languages, academic challenges, games and field trips. This program culminates with a weekend camping trip for participants and their families. This program operates annually from June through August, Mondays through Fridays.
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Summer Youth Enrichment
For Parents and Adults

To nurture the good feelings in parents and other adult members of the community family about themselves physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually which contributes to positive self-images and high self-esteem -- qualities which are essential in order to become healthy, happy, and effective in meeting the challenges of parenthood and life in general.
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For Parents and Adults
Make healthy Eating a Lifestyle

SHAPE Community Center provides Healthy Food Workshops and Lunch first Saturday of each month. 3815 Live Oak, Houston, TX 77004 713.521.0641 Instructor: Vergie (Sunshine) 281.630.5222
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Make healthy Eating a Lifestyle

Reverend Bill Lawson

is the founding pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. He is now retired from that position. Lawson was born in St. Louis, Mo., and reared by Walter and Clarisse Lawson Cade in Kansas City, Kansas, where he graduated from Sumner High School (1946). He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Tennessee A. & I. State University in Nashville (1950). He returned to Kansas City to attend Central Baptist Theological Seminary, which conferred upon Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees. While in seminary, he was married to Audrey H. Lawson of St. Louis. The Lawsons have four children, and celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in January of 2004. He came to Houston after graduation from seminary to serve as director of the Baptist Student Union and Professor of Bible at the new (eight years old) Texas Southern University. He served in that position for ten years, also becoming director of Upward Bound, a pre-college program for high school students on the TSU campus. During his years at TSU, a number of residents of the neighborhood persuaded the Lawsons to establish a church near the university. Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church was established in their home in June, 1962. The congregation has grown to over 5,000 members, with many outreach programs, and is much respected in the community. Since the church was born and lived its infant years during the Civil Rights Movement, Lawson has been deeply involved in advocacy activities for African Americans, for Hispanics, for women, and for the poor. In 1996 the Houston community honored him with the creation of a non-profit advocacy agency called WALIPP, the William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity. That agency has gone before public officials and bodies on behalf of the underclasses, and now has established a middle school for boys, chartered it as a public school with the Houston Independent School District so it would be accessible to low-income families, and this year has risen to the second highest ranking among public secondary schools. WALIPP has also constructed 50 units of apartments for seniors in Houston’s Third Ward. Finally, the agency is pulling together community development groups, churches, civic clubs, and local governments to redevelop the Third Ward so that aggressive real estate development will not expel all who need affordable housing. He has received honorary doctorates from Howard Payne College in Brownwood, the University of Houston, and Texas Southern University in Houston. He is the author of a book of meditations called Lawson’s Leaves of Love. Lawson always works in close partnership with wife Audrey, who worked with the Baptist Student Union at TSU, with the church for his 42-year tenure there, and now with WALIPP.

Attorney Ben Hall

Dr. Benjamin L. Hall, III has been Board Certified in Civil Trial law and Personal Injury Trial law since 2005 by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. In addition to his role on the TBLS Board of Directors, Dr. Hall is a member of the Houston Bar Association, American Bar Association, National Bar Association and the Houston Lawyer Association. Dr. Hall graduated from the University of South Carolina, cum laude, in 1977. He went on to receive his Ph.D. from Duke University Graduate School, and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1986. Dr. Hall has received many professional honors including the highest rating for professional competence and ethical standards awarded by Martindale-Hubbell. He is also a multi-year recipient of the “Texas Super Lawyer” recognition by Texas Monthly, was named one of Houston’s Top Lawyers for the People by H Texas Magazine, and is a member of ABOTA. Dr. Hall is founder of The Hall Law Firm in Houston where he specializes in major personal injury and civil trial litigation. Prior to opening his own firm, Dr. Hall served as the City Attorney for the City of Houston during the administration of Mayor Bob Lanier (1992 to 1994).

Attorney Reginald McKamie

has achieved the AV® Rating in the "Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory," one of America's most exclusive directory of lawyers. To achieve this prestigious distinction, Attorney McKamie has been designated by his colleagues to be preeminent in his field. A member of the U. S. Navigation Safety Advisory Council Captain McKamie has been appointed to the Council by two U. S. Secretaries of Transportation. Captain McKamie is also a Board member of the National Academy of Science Transportation Research Board in Washington, DC. Attorney McKamie also attained Proctor status, the highest membership category for practicing lawyers of "The Maritime Law Association of the United States." He received a B.S. from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy; Kings Point, New York in 1975, an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California in 1976, and a J.D. from the University of Houston in 1986 where he was a member of Phi Delta Phi Legal Fraternity. Attorney McKamie has been involved in maritime personal injury and collision cases and in 1991, as lead counsel for the Port of Houston, in a case involving a major maritime casualty and oil spill in Galveston Bay, successfully argued in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in Golnay Barqe Company, et al., v. M/T Shinoussa, et al., that the Port of Houston, as a governmental entity, was conveyed a proprietary interest by the legislature in the waters where the oil spill occurred and, therefore, had a claim for economic damages to the port. This case was considered by the Court a case of first impression for the Fifth Circuit and is reported in American Maritime Cases. While a graduate student at the University of Southern California, Mr. McKamie worked as an Assistant Marine Underwriter with the Insurance Company of North America. Following graduation from the University of Southern California he accepted a position as an Able Bodied Seaman aboard an ocean going vessel. While pursuing a seagoing career he also worked with the certified Public Accounting firm of Cook & Robinson, CPA. In 1981 Mr. McKamie earned his license as an Unlimited Master Mariner and his license as a certified Public Accountant. While a law student at the University of Houston he gained valuable business experience working for Exxon Shipping Company where he held the positions of Assistant Fleet Manning Supervisor, a position that dealt with personnel and labor issues and Senior Financial Specialist, a position that focused primarily on the analysis of the financial and operating results of Exxon Shipping Company. Captain McKamie returned to sea in 1986 after graduation from law school and served as Captain of the S/S Exxon North Slope, S/S Exxon Philadelphia and the S/S Exxon Benicia. He is a member of the Texas and Houston Bar Associations and Texas Society of certified Public Accountants.

Philanthropist Rick Lowe

Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses (PRH), founded two decades ago, has created a blueprint for using urban renewal practices within an artistic context to enrich lives. Located in Houston’s Northern Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods, PRH is founded on the principle that art and the community it creates can be the foundation for revitalizing depressed inner-city neighborhoods (an idea that derives in part from Joseph Beuys’s concept of “social sculpture”). At its founding, PRH consisted of 22 houses on a block-and-a-half; today it occupies six blocks that are home to 40 properties, including exhibition and residency spaces for artists, office spaces, a community gallery, a park, low-income residential and commercial spaces, and houses in which young mothers can live for a year and receive support as they work to finish school and get their bearings. These are all accompanied by programs that encompass arts, neighborhood revitalization, education, preservation, and community service.

The Elders Institute of Wisdom

Summer Youth Enrichment Program

Wholistic Health Day/Conference

Tickets on Sale Now

After School After School Enrichment Program

Celebrating 45 Years of Dedicated Service