Hello! This is Judith from NY branch.

Earlier this year in April, our employees worked tirelessly to pack 3,000 backpacks filled with everyday necessities for NYC’s homeless population. These backpacks were distributed to the “street homeless” population by the Coalition for the Homeless.

To tie into that initiative, we invited Elizabeth Henderson from the Coalition for the Homeless to provide employees with the opportunity to ask questions about the homeless population, how people can help, how corporations can help, as well as how the Coalition works to assist the homeless population.

In this open session, employees felt the gravity of the daily situation and were able to learn about the mission of the Coalition for the Homeless. Employees were also able to fully understand the impact of their time and efforts put into the April backpack donation.

Some of the most impactful moments from the presentation were:

●Many in the homeless population are considered working poor. Many of the housing insecure work full-time jobs, however do not make enough to support housing prices in the NYC market.

●Many shelters are families – with young, school-aged children.

●Many of the homeless population choose not to go to shelters as they find living on the street as safer.

With a recorded 18,749 adults sleeping in shelters employee’s were able to engage, ask questions and learn more on what we can do as a community to help the company’s mission.

There were 35 employees that attended the seminar and a recording of the event was posted on our internal learning platform, SuMi Learn, for those who were not able to attend.