2025 Year in Review
As we enter the final days of 2025, Mobilize Waco is at a pivotal moment.
Since our founding, we have operated on an almost entirely volunteer basis. To sustain our momentum and grow into the future, we need to create one or more permanent paid staff positions. We are applying for grant funding, and we also need financial support from you.
Your tax-deductible year-end gift and pledge of ongoing support will help us start the new year strong.
Leadership
In the spring, founding director Meg Wallace swapped places with board member Toby Kurosky, who assumed the role of executive director to take Mobilize Waco to the next level. Meg is now board secretary.
Toby has been increasing our impact by inviting civic leaders to our monthly Action Team meetings, where Mobilizers have strategized with the chief of police, health care providers, city planners, and public transit managers for improved access and services. As a participant in the 42nd cohort of Leadership Waco, sponsored by the Waco Chamber of Commerce, Toby is making strong connections with leaders in business and education as well.
Recently Toby joined with other blind Wacoans who met each other through Mobilize Waco to establish the new Heart of Texas Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. And especially, Toby has taken our Grandy's Stash project from a mere idea to a vigorous disability community mutual aid project, bringing much needed medical supplies to neighbors who have difficulty getting out and about. More on Grandy's Stash later.
We were also glad to welcome a new board member, Dr. Emily Frake. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Baylor Center for Disability and Flourishing, Emily brings needed fund-raising skills and policy knowledge to the board.
And congratulations to board vice president Suzette May, who completed her Bachelor of Arts in Disability Studies at Arizona State University. Suzette has moved on to a Master of Arts program in Orientation and Mobility online at Western Michigan University.
Meantime, Suzette has been building on and sharing her expertise every where from the neighboring town of Lorena, to discussions with state-level traffic engineers and inspectors, to national meetings on traffic control and transportation. Her Seeing Eye Dog, Fred, is always up for adventure. In December Suzette told us: "Fred wants snow!" He's likely to get it when they travel again in January.
Visibility
In December we completed our second full year of interviews with disabled Wacoans on Living It, our radio program on KWBU, Waco's NPR station. As the station fights to stay open after recent funding cuts, we encourage you to give to KWBU as well as to Mobilize Waco.
Every episode of Living It deserves a listen, but here we'd like to highlight interviews with director Toby Kurosky about his path toward leadership in Mobilize Waco, and with Baylor literature professor Greg Garrett about his longtime struggle with depression, as well as a conversation between KWBU operations assistant Malcolm Foster and bioethics podcaster Devan Stahl about Malcolm's journey with an experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis.
Access
A report came in from Toby a couple weeks ago:
Mr. D received his fabulous new electric scooter yesterday. I had a bike chain delivered to him today from Walmart to keep it secure. Please record a very happy and successful Grandy's Stash recipient who is now free to move about the community. His Christmas wish came true.
Mr. D's story captures several wonderful elements of our Grandy's Stash project, which collects durable medical equipment (DME) and incontinence and other supplies and distributes them to neighbors who need them.
We learned of Mr. D's predicament from a social worker at a home health agency. He lives in a second-floor apartment and is waiting for a first-floor unit to open up. He can make it down his apartment steps holding tightly to the railing but can't get much farther without wheels. He does not drive, and he does not have the upper body strength to propel a wheelchair a long way. But he does live in one of those rare places in Waco where he could roll to a grocery store along sidewalks and accessible intersections. If he spent long months on a waiting list, Mr. D might have been able to get an electric wheelchair, but he worried that he wouldn't be able to get his groceries home. He hoped for an electric scooter on which it would be easy for him to carry his things. And now he has one!
The first wonderful element of Grandy's Stash reflected in Mr. D's story is that we are partnering with home health practitioners who see how people navigate in and around their home and can strategize with them for the best solution. Second, because many recipients have thin support systems and limited access to transportation, we often deliver. That means we're seeing the recipient's home setting and can make adjustments when necessary. Realizing that Mr. D would need to store his scooter outside his apartment until he could move to a first-floor unit, Toby had a lock delivered.
The third wonderful thing is captured in Mr. D's reaction. Toby says "often there are tears" when he makes Grandy's Stash deliveries. People who are unable to afford or physically access medical goods may wonder if help will ever come. A visit from a delivery volunteer makes for a very good day.
A shout out to our delivery team: (pictured above) executive director Toby Kurosky, board treasurer Donna Dill, intern Juana Orozco, and (not pictured) Toby's mom, Denise Kurosky. Juana was a caregiver for Mobilize Waco founder Meg Wallace's mom Pat Sweeney--Grandy to her grandchildren. Juana and Meg dreamed up the project in Grandy's memory care room while Grandy listened in. Now Juana is pursuing a degree in social work, and we're delighted when she decided to do her fall internship with us and will continuing volunteering in the new year.
With Toby at the helm and Juana, Donna, and Denise at his side, Grandy's Stash is growing quickly. In 2025 we collaborated with 14 agencies and organizations, from Waco Family Medicine to the Community Cancer Association, and from AccentCare Home Health to the Veterans One Stop. We have gotten DME into the hands of 66 neighbors, and personal supplies out to 22. The word is spreading, and it's becoming hard to keep up with the demand.
That's where you come in
In this year of growing impact, greater visibility, and leadership gains, the need for paid staff has become acute. We do hope you will support our work financially as we roll into 2026. We highly value gifts of time and medical equipment and supplies as well.
We would also like to meet others who want to learn more about our work and might wish to share their time, dollars, medical supplies, or Living It stories. Please contact us to make an introduction.
Thank you for following our work. With your help, we can enter the new year with the wind at our back. We surely would appreciate it.
Happy New Year,
JD Vitarius, Mobilize Waco board president |
