Veronika Scott
Stephen Schock, a professor of industrial design at a downtown Detroit art and design school, had no idea what his students would come up with when he started a “design activism” class. His instruction was simple and open ended, “Design to fill a need.”
One student, Veronika Scott, took this to heart. She was intrigued to see homeless people sleeping outside shelters in the bitter cold when they could easily be sleeping inside. Why was this? What would make a person prefer a life in the street over the comfort of life in a shelter? What could she do to solve the needs of the people living out in the open?
She decided that if she were to fill a need she had to first understand it. So she bravely walked into a shelter at 8 pm one night to find out. The person there took her to a room where a group of people was watching TV. He shut off the TV and put her front of the group and left. The group was quite upset for having their TV show interrupted. But after the cussing had stopped Veronika managed to connect with the group. She persisted and showed up at the shelter three times a week, week after week. Eventually she learnt that homeless people preferred to stay outside the shelter because of pride and privacy, and that there was a great need for these people to stay warm. This was when an idea of a coat was born. The coat should be waterproof, keep people warm, and turn into a sleeping bag at night. The need for such a coat was tremendous as in Detroit itself there are more than 20,000 homeless people.
Her first attempt to make the coat resulted in a heavy coat that took 80 hours to make. When she showed it to folks in the shelter they said that it resembled a body bag! But Veronika would not give up. Even when her class was over she kept going. She could not turn her back on the real need that she saw in the streets everyday. She just kept going and her persistence paid off.
John Bradburn, in charge of waste reduction at GM, heard about Veronika’s effort. He realized that the sound absorbent and insulating material used to line the insides of a car, would be ideal for the coat she was making. John approached Vernoika and showed her the material and asked if that would work for her coat. Veronika thought it would be perfect and even more delighted that GM would could offer the left over waste product to her for free. More help followed. Carhartt Inc., which specializes in durable work clothing, offered her three industrial sewing machines along with training to use them.
Then another idea came to Veronika. What if she hired homeless women to make these coats? This was immediately resisted. She was told that homeless people would be unable to provide the consistent effort needed to produce these coats. But by now Veronika had enough familiarity with the homeless. She trusted her gut and went ahead and hired her first homeless person, Elisha. Soon she had won the 2011 International Design Excellence Award and Red Cross was asking her to produce 2000 coats that could be used in case of a disaster! Veronika has now graduated from college and runs a non-profit (The Empowerment Plan) that is housed in an abandoned building and hires 6 homeless women to produce 150 coats a month. Even more remarkable is that Elisha, the first homeless woman to be hired by Veronika has completely moved out of the shelter system into her own apartment. Her youngest son is now studying Japanese in a charter school!
This story is tremendously inspiring as it shows that even a 20 year old student with a heart in the right place can make a big difference. The key is not that Veronika is a design genius, but that she cared and she persisted where others would have given up and moved on.
Related:
The official Web site of The Empowerment Plan.
NY Times Article: Altering Clothes, and Lives with Design
Forbes article on Veronika: I’m Hiring Homeless Women In Detroit.
You may also like: A Different Kind Of Mugging Incident
Credits:This has been written by Raj Shah and edited by Ketna Shah.