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NEW YORK (WCBS) — More than 130 people who overcame homelessness in New York City were celebrated at a special graduation ceremony Wednesday.
The Doe Fund hosted the ceremony through its Ready, Willing, and Able program to recognize people who transitioned to long-term housing.
The program helps people experiencing homelessness find housing, jobs or both.
Graduate Imani Abdus-Sabir once struggled with addiction and was incarcerated, but everything changed when he learned about The Doe Fund.
“There’s no other program that offers people the opportunity to be employed while living in a shelter,” he said.
Many of the people the organization serves are formerly incarcerated, a community that faces barriers to securing employment despite a desire to work. Formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public, according to The Prison Policy Initiative.
The Doe Fund helps make this transition easier, from dressing for a job interview to finding supportive housing.
Graduate Ricky Willis was once living in a shelter but is now employed as a driver, living in Brooklyn.
“When I came out, and I see all the things that I accomplished, it feels good when I look back on it,” he said.
The organization was founded by George T. McDonald, who, in the 1980s, began distributing food to unhoused people on the floor of Grand Central Terminal for 700 consecutive nights.
There he built a connection with a woman known to the community as “Mama,” but on a freezing Christmas Eve night in 1985, transit police evicted Mama from the terminal. By the next morning, she had died on a bench from pneumonia and would later be nicknamed “Mama Doe.”
This inspired McDonald to create The Doe Fund, an organization that would not only provide for those in need but would also empower people to rebuild and achieve stability after homelessness or incarceration.
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