Two years ago, Mitch Albom sat down with Gail Marlow to talk with her about her mat and pillow project. Her first step in her journey to support the homeless here in Detroit.
Mitch: Motor City Mitten Mission now not only continues this work, but has expanded to much more, walk us through how your project has grown from the time we first sat down.
Gail: It’s grown exponentially. We went from starting off with our mats and pillow project that you covered, to starting out with working with a handful of schools and churches to now we collaborate with over 350 different schools, businesses, organizations, churches all throughout Michigan, as well as Ohio, in Canada, we’ve recycled over 3 million plastic bags. But in addition to that we are the only operating street outreach team in Metro Detroit that operates seven days a week. And then our transitional support services. That’s when we’re helping people that are going from homelessness into housing, they don’t have anything, they don’t have any furniture, they don’t have appliances. They don’t have any clothing. And so we help get them set up in their situation. We have not missed a day of doing outreach to our unsheltered population, the city of Detroit.
Mitch: Now basically you go out every single day or every single night into the homeless communities. That’s an incredible sacrifice.
Gail: There’s just such a great need match and the world has changed so much.
Mitch: You’ve, you’ve really brought it up and we congratulate you and thank you for what you’re doing for our city’s homeless.
Gail: Oh, you’re welcome.
