Overcoming and conquering obstacles!
How A Woman Who Served A 10 Year Prison Term Became A Leader
Six years ago I gave Veronika Scott, a 20-year-old product design student at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, the stage at the United Nations to share her class project design that would fill a need for Detroit’s homeless population: a self-heated, waterproof coat that transforms into a sleeping bag, and is an over the shoulder bag when not in use.
As Veronika stood on that stage and told her story, she struck me. I saw a young woman who has that special spark that will ignite others to fix what’s wrong in the world. And that’s what she did. After graduating from college, she founded The Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based nonprofit organization that hires single parents from local shelters and trains them to become full time seamstresses who make the sleeping bag coats. These women earn a stable income, find secure housing and gain back their independence for themselves and for their families. What started out as a project to keep the homeless warm quickly became a model that is breaking the cycle of poverty.
