Pay It Forward

Reliant surprises 2 Houston nonprofits with impactful donations

Before pink ribbons covered the landscape or NFL players wore the signature color during October, Dorothy Gibbons and Dr. Dixie Melillo were busy laying the foundation for what would soon become the leading breast care organization in southeast Texas: The Rose.

Thanks to the Reliant Gives program, The Rose recently experienced a new surge of support from the greater Houston community, as the public rallied to cast their votes and help the organization receive a surprise $20,000 donation.

While there was a plethora of pink as part of the surprise celebration with staff, breast cancer survivors, and volunteers, Gibbons was filled with gratitude as she reflected on how far the organization has come and how many additional lives they will be able to impact this year alone thanks to the donation from Reliant.

The Rose's mission is to reduce deaths from breast cancer by providing access to screening, diagnostics, and treatment services to any woman, regardless of her ability to pay. With the $20,000 donation from Reliant Gives, the organization can now serve an additional 100 women who need it the most. Many women cite cost and lack of access as reasons why they delay preventive services, yet early detection mammography screenings are proven as the most powerful weapon in the fight against breast cancer. The Rose addresses any barrier that might keep a woman from caring for her own needs.

Riding beyond labels
The same morning, the impact from Reliant Gives continued its way up I-45 to a rural suburb of North Houston, where a large barn and dirt arena filled with horses greeted Reliant volunteers excitedly carrying an oversized $10,000 check and colorful balloons.

The location is one of many sites operated by SIRE (Self-Improvement Thru Riding Education), a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with special needs through therapeutic horsemanship activities. The nonprofit's dedicated staff, volunteers, clients, and their families (and animals, too!) joined in celebration of the generosity of the public's support and Reliant's donation.

Many special needs children often take their first steps and speak their first words at SIRE after spending time with the gentle giants used for the therapy. The donation will fulfill critical needs for not only the 250-plus riders SIRE currently serves, but will also provide scholarships for families who need these services but cannot afford them.

For this year's first round of Reliant Gives, CASA of Collin County in the Dallas area also participated and earned the top donation through public voting.

Hands and feet in the community
Through the Reliant Gives program, established in 2016, $720,000 has now been donated to 18 deserving nonprofits across Texas. In addition to this program, Reliant supports local communities through volunteerism, charitable giving, and strategic long-term partnerships. In 2017 alone, they provided more than $4 million in financial and in-kind donations to various organizations across the state, and Reliant employees supported over 100 nonprofits with nearly 8,000 volunteer hours.

Giving is in Reliant's DNA, exemplified by programs like Reliant Gives and positiveNRG. The Reliant Gives donations were timed to coincide with positiveNRG Week, which is a week dedicated to volunteerism across the country by Reliant's parent company, NRG.

In May, Reliant employees across Houston rolled up their sleeves to be the hands and feet at an array of organizations, including:

Whether it's organizing food drives, planting trees, walking for a cause, or fundraising on behalf of nonprofits, Reliant is committed to giving to the communities where its employees live and work. For more information on Reliant Gives, visit giving.myreliant.com.

The Rose won $20,000 to help improve the lives of Houston women through breast health and advocacy.

Photo courtesy of Reliant

The Rose won $20,000 to help improve the lives of Houston women through breast health and advocacy.

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Documentary News

Netflix series Waco: American Apocalypse debuts with newly unearthed footage

Waco: American Apocalypse

ATF agents at Waco compound in 1993.

Netflix has a new series on the tragedy that took place in Waco three decades ago: Called Waco: American Apocalypse, it's a three-part series documenting the standoff between cult leader David Koresh and the federal government that ended in a fiery inferno, televised live, with 76 people dead.

The series debuts on March 22, to coincide with the 30-year anniversary of the event which took place from February 28 to April 19, 1993.

It's an oft-told tale and not the only new release to try and exploit the 30-year anniversary: Jeff Guinn, former books editor at the Fort Worth Star Telegram, just came out with a book in January, also described as definitive, called Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage.

Waco: American Apocalypse is directed by another Texan: Dallas native Tiller Russell (Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer), who obtained never-before-seen videotapes of FBI negotiations, as well as raw news footage and interviews with insiders.

Those insiders include one of David Koresh’s spiritual wives; the last child released from the compound alive; a sniper from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team; the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit Chief; journalists; and members of the ATF tactical team who watched colleagues die in the shootout against the heavily armed members of the religious sect.

The FBI videotaped inside the hostage negation room, thinking they'd be there maybe 24 hours, not 51 days.

"These are video cassettes that were sitting in somebody’s closet for 30 years, that show the mechanics of hostage negotiations in an intimate setting - not the hostage negotiation scenarios you see in films, but a team of people grinding, day in and day out, for 51 days," Russell says.

He also procured footage from Waco TV station KWTX, who had a reporter embedded in the initial gunfight.

While the standoff was broadcast live on TV at the time, much of it was out of camera range. The film uses 3D graphics to recreate the details of the compound.

Russell acknowledges that the tale of the cult leader who was also a pedophile, the debate over the right to bear arms, the constitutional limits of religious freedom, dredge up painful conversations that continue today.

"It cast a long shadow, pre-saging the Timothy McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma, the shooting at Colombine, and a growing distrust of government, but I think it's important to reckon with our past so we don't repeat mistakes," he says.

"So much of what’s roiling in culture today can be traced to Waco, a story about God and guns in America with all these children at the center whose lives were determined by the adults around them," he says. "There was no playbook for what happened, everyone was out on a limb, and people made mistakes. But almost everybody was trying to do their very best."

"I think this is a story that's often recalled in politicized terms, with finger-pointing on who screwed up and how did we get here, but there's a profound humanity to it all," he says.

Watch the trailer below:

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