The Empowerment Plan is a Detroit based social enterprise. They take on homeless women from local shelters and train them as seamstresses. They are offered full time employment manufacturing these coats which double up as sleeping bags. The coats are given to homeless people living on the streets. The Empowerment Plan is the brainchild of 21 year old design student Veronika Scott. You can read more about the project and watch their video here.
A Guardian article last week reported: “The scale of Detroit’s decline is dizzying. The city’s population has dropped from 2 million in 1950 to 700,000 today, as Detroiters have become fed up with decades of mismanagement and rising crime and poverty. Detroit’s murder rate is at a 40-year high, only a third of its ambulances are in working order, and nearly half its streetlights are broken.”
Detroit’s has become famous for it’s abandoned buildings, 78,000 in total. A great project. Detroiturbex, hopes to raise awareness of the social and economic challenges the city of Detroit faces through photography. This then and now photos highlight the city’s demise.
green ice cream 