Every winter dozens of homeless people in Detriot, shiver in the cold especially those without warm coats. Non-profit initiative, Empowerment Plan has taken a stand to try and solve this problem and consequently coming up with the most successful homeless employment program. The coat-making program has helped 100% of its homeless workers afford their own homes within months.
They hire homeless people and teach them how to make coats for the people who are living on the streets. These are not your typical coats, they transform into storage totes and full-length sleeping bags to protect against frostbite and death.
Four years ago, Pam Warren was homeless after she was laid off from her car parts manufacturing job after suffering a severe blood clot, which rendered her unable to work for months. She decided to leave her husband and raise her children alone because she was a victim of domestic abuse, like many of her colleagues at the Empowerment Plan. After four months living in a car, the family moved into a homeless shelter and that’s where she learned about the Empowerment Plan which occasionally hosts job fairs with the shelter.
Founder of Empowerment Plan, Veronika Scott was homeless off and on throughout her childhood as her family struggled with job loss, mental health issues and addiction.”There was a point in my upbringing where everything I personally owned could fit in a backpack,” Scott said. In that backpack, she had a sketchpad and that’s how she got into art. Her love for art along with scholarships and financial aid got her into the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where she majored in product design.
Scotts plans took a sharp detour when she got an unusual class assignment where she had to design a project that fulfils a need in the community. She that learned hundreds of freezing homeless people couldn’t get into shelters that were already full. So she decided to design a coat that turned into a sleeping bag. It took her 80-plus hours to make the first one
She took her first batch to a local shelter to get feedback from homeless people. But her biggest epiphany came when a woman at the shelter yelled “This is pointless! I don’t need a coat! I need a job!” and this drove her to employ homeless people. After graduation that’s when she started the Empowerment Plan which was completely funded by the PayPal button from her blog. Carhartt donated the first sewing machines and fabric and soon she hired her first few employees from a homeless shelter.
Fast forward eight years and the Empowerment Plan has employed more than 80 homeless people. Many have graduated and started their own business ventures. “This is so much bigger than anything I could have imagined and not a single worker has reverted back to homelessness,” said Scott
