Godfrey Hubert has made it his mission to help better the lives of thousands of children in Cy-Fair ISD through his work as senior pastor at The Foundry and with local nonprofit, Cy-Hope.
"When I think of Godfrey, I think of an individual who is focused not on himself, but on serving others," CFISD associate superintendent Roy Garcia said. "You hear the term servant leadership used frequently, but it really resonates when I think of Godfrey and what he's doing for his congregation and the Cy-Fair ISD community."
Hubert came to Cy-Fair and The Foundry in 1984 when the church had 150 members and Jones Road was a two-lane country road. Today, the church has more than 5,000 members and two locations.
"What I'm most excited about is what God has done here in the last three or four years," Hubert said. "We looked at our ministries and realized we had been spending a lot of time and effort filling potholes rather than building highways. Since Cy-Fair is all about children, we made them our mission and founded Cy-Hope as a nonprofit so businesses and other faith-based organizations can join in on that effort to make life better for kids who are economically and spiritually disadvantaged."
Cy-Hope executive director Lynda Zelenka helped found the organization with Hubert in 2011.
"Godfrey is an incredible encourager," she said. "He's encouraged all of his staff at The Foundry and those of us at Cy-Hope to take risks and accomplish great things, and we certainly have through his vision of making life better for kids."
Cy-Hope started with two school adoptions and two Hope Centers that offer counseling services and progressed to a backpack program that feeds almost 2,000 CFISD children every weekend through a partnership with the Houston Food Bank.
"I'm too old now at this point in my life to spend my time on anything that's not going to change the world," Hubert said.
One of Cy-Hope's next initiatives involves partnering with an organization called Ambassadors of Compassion, a national program that aims to curb the high school dropout rate.
"High school graduates today aren't competing against just Americans for jobs, they're competing against 7 billion people for jobs," Hubert said. "Preparing our kids for the competition that they're facing now, and preparing them to educationally and otherwise enter the workforce and become productive citizens, is integral to the quality of life all of us are going to have in America."
Hubert said Cy-Hope is working with CFISD administrators to roll out the program to all ninth-grade students in the next semester.
"The problems of this world right now are too big for any one sector to tackle," Hubert said. "Organizations need to pool their resources to start making a change. We need to see public education as an investment, not a burden."
Cy-Hope involvement
Godfrey Hubert is vice president and one of the co-founders of Cy-Hope, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping economically disadvantaged students in the Cy-Fair community. There are numerous ways businesses, nonprofits and faith-based organizations can get involved with Cy-Hope. More information is available at www.cyhopecounseling.org.
