North Texas woman left accounting career to help others

PLANO, Texas - A North Texas woman changed her path at the peak of her career as a public accountant to provide for others as a public servant.

Janet Collinsworth has helped homeless women and led families to find stability in their lives.

The change began with her daughter and teaching her year-long Methodist confirmation class.

"I was raised in the church and so I knew all the stories and I thought, well, how hard can this be?" recalled Collinsworth. "When I opened the curriculum to begin to prepare for that class, I realized I might know the stories, but I didn't know theology."

Collinsworth changed course, enrolling at SMU's Perkins School of Theology and getting her master's degree in Theology.

That brought more change. She shut down her forensic accounting firm and took a staff position at a United Methodist church in Plano.

With the North Texas Food Bank, she opened a food pantry in 2009.

"That food pantry is still going today and feeding thousands of individuals each and every year in east Plano," said Collinsworth.

Through meeting the need for food, Collinsworth learned of another need: housing. Especially for women and women-led households with children.

"One of the biggest problems that was not really being addressed at that time was the problem of homelessness and the problem of affordable housing," Collinsworth said.

To help, she began a ministry in east Plano called Agape Research and Assistance Center. Its purpose is to provide housing and support to homeless women and their children.

"The whole focus was on helping them overcome whatever happened. Whatever situation brought them into homelessness and about 90% of those women, the cause for them becoming homeless was abuse. They were escaping abuse. Sometimes from different states and sometimes from sex trafficking, and Agape became a haven for that and became an opportunity to find access to the services that they needed in order to become self-sustaining," Collinsworth explained.

But with rents and mortgages escalating, women coming out of the year-long Agape program could still not afford to live independently.

"We stepped out again on faith and created a very innovative design. It's called an urban village," said Collinsworth.

Jericho Village, named after the fortified city in the Old Testament, in Wylie will include 38 income-based units set in nine residential buildings.

The buildings have wrap-around services and create a community for women and their children.

"Building an affordable housing village was not on my bucket list, but it is probably one of the most joyous things that I've embarked on and the community support and our excitement in providing stable homes for families in need has just changed all of us," said Collinsworth.

The hope is that Jericho Village will open in October of next year.