Feature Writing

In 2010, Veronika Scott was a college student with an idea. 

One of her class assignments was to design a product to fill a social need. Her idea? Use recycled materials to make a coat that could turn into a sleeping bag for use by homeless individuals.

Today, the Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based non-profit she founded, has distributed more than 35,000 sleeping bag coats worldwide. Even more importantly, it provides employment and education to homeless parents who manufacture the coats. By 2019, 75 jobs had been created.

Veronika’s journey with the Empowerment Plan has been one of learning and growth, and is a good example of General Motors environmental engineer John Bradburn’s thought that, sometimes, “keeping it simple is stupid.”

John and Veronika met when she was just beginning her work on the coats. In fact, she was still a student. 

In her first encounter with John, she remembers he had some “giant hunks of white vehicle insulation” with him. They were both waiting to be interviewed for a documentary being produced by the Discovery Channel. She laughs at the memory of him charging straight to the point – he had some materials he thought she could use for insulation in her coats – before they introduced themselves. “He was very gung-ho and passionate. It was great, but for a minute I thought ‘who is this guy with this material?’”

That material did make it into the coats, and John and Veronika went on to partner on other future projects.

“General Motors and Carhartt were the first big players that we worked with that helped us move the needle,” she says about her early work with the Empowerment Plan. 

General Motors has provided various surplus manufacturing materials for use as insulation in the coats. Carhartt, a workwear brand headquartered in Detroit, has provided fabrics. Other companies including Patagonia and Refrigiwear also have donated materials.

In the early stages of her work, Veronika says her ideas about sustainability were “evolving.” 

“My idea was to rip apart old clothing, and to use things like used billboard fabric and orange construction fencing I found,” says Veronika.

“My mentality shifted when Carhartt came to the table. They provided dead stock and discontinued colors. I didn’t realize there are so many ways to work upstream, especially in the fashion and apparel industry,” she says. “And, then John became involved. It was through those conversations about insulation and the million ways we could collaborate that really changed my mind about what is actual sustainability. It didn’t look like what I had been learning in school and what everybody else was doing at the time.”

Another conversation Veronika had early in her development of the Empowerment Plan changed the way she defines sustainability. 

While she was out in the community, a homeless woman approached Veronika. This woman did not want a coat; she wanted a job. That conversation led Veronika to commit to hiring parents from shelters across Detroit to manufacture the coats to help families break the cycle of poverty and become financially secure.

“There is environmental sustainability, which is minimizing your footprint on the world,” she says. “Then there is sustainability as it relates to people. That includes paying people so they can support themselves. Practicing ethical employment when making these products. Leaving the world a better place than when it was given to you.”

Veronika says that people tend to focus on the coats when first learning about the Empowerment Plan, but what is truly unique about the organization is its hiring of the homeless and its success in helping them achieve financial independence and stability for their whole family. 

Employees spend an average of two years at the Empowerment Plan, with a goal of eventually finding work outside the organization. During that time, they are paid a full-time wage. Approximately 60 percent of the paid 40-hour work week is dedicated to coat production and the remaining 40 percent is dedicated to programming and supportive services.  That includes such things as GED training, driver’s education, financial health and wellness, and domestic violence support, among other programs. To date, not one employee has fallen back into homelessness since the Empowerment Plan began.

“It’s very rewarding to see team members come out the other side,” says Veronika. “What isn’t as visible is the ups and downs it took for them to get there. It shows how strong and powerful these women are. It’s a privilege to know them.”

Veronika has a degree in design and she says the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) methodology was definitely part of her training. 

“If I had followed that advice and kept it simple, it would have led us to outsource the manufacturing of the coats,” says Veronika. She agrees that “keeping it simple is stupid” was a much better approach that ultimately led them to their mission to end the generational cycle of poverty by providing employment and education to homeless parents.

“I think the world wants everything to have a ‘silver bullet’ solution,” says Veronika. “They want one solution to fit all the problems. We see that with homelessness. Homelessness is incredibly complicated. It’s a human problem, meaning there are so many different nuances to it.”

That is why the Empowerment Plan provides such a wide variety of programs and resources for its team members. Some team members may need help getting out of an abusive relationship, while others may need help with financial planning or resources for food. 

That philosophy was also evident in a project to recycle plastic water bottles generated during the Flint water crisis. John thought of Veronika and the need for coat insulation immediately. Eventually the entire supply chain of seven different companies came together to visit the Empowerment Plan and work on developing the necessary steps to transform used bottles into coat insulation and other products. This was not the typical process used by large manufacturers to develop a product component or recycle a waste. Normally, it would be outsourced to smaller, specialized companies.

John explains: “We brought people together who were sustainability-minded and had similar goals. They were ready to step up and help out.”

The result was a supply “web” versus the traditional supply “chain.” 

“It was understood that as the water situation in Flint was resolved, the bottles as a source of insulation material would go away,” John explains. “It became an evolving manufacturing system. Some of the partners who had not previously worked with the auto industry expanded their work in the industry. Others built on the Flint bottle experience to expand into the mattress manufacturing sector.”

The additional complexity of creating a supply web helped find a productive reuse for the bottles, support the good work of the Empowerment Plan and create additional business opportunities for the participating companies.

Today, the Empowerment Plan distributes to every state in the U.S. and to 20 other countries. Looking ahead, they have plans to continue to grow. Recent improvements in the production process have increased annual production of coats to 9,000 each year. They would like to land a large contract to provide coats to an organization like FEMA or the Salvation Army. 

In addition, they are looking at replicating their program to provide jobs and services to end the cycle of homelessness and poverty in other U.S. cities.

"We have the capacity to do so much more,” says Veronika.

Photo: The Empowerment Plan