ATLANTA — There are just over 6,600 people living unhoused in Georgia.
That number comes from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
In Atlanta alone, 3,200 people are living without a home. Those who are unhoused in Atlanta include veterans, people with disabilities and young adults as the largest groups.
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Channel 2’s Jorge Estevez learned how two women from Milton are using their passion for repurposing to give a second chance to those who need it the most.
Lauren Cunningham and Robyn Pinto collect items needed by the unhoused.
“So this is kind of our women’s collection,” Cunningham showed Estevez. “We have got short sleeves, long sleeves on top. We have tarps, we have masks.”
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Showing Channel 2 Action News their workroom, Cunningham and Pinto showed the items they give away to those who are homeless every Saturday.
Cunningham said part of the idea was from “a love of reusing, repurposing, recycling.”
The two women take things that people no longer need and give them to people who do, in this case, unhoused people in downtown Atlanta.
“I think the biggest misconception is they’re not people,” Cunningham said.
She and Pinto see them as people who just need a hand with the basics, basics that we take for granted every day.
That’s why they started their nonprofit, Loving Others Thru Service, in 2021.
“Most of them are extremely grateful, so kind, so appreciative,” Cunningham said.
The organization started working with the “For The Hope Partnership,” which serves breakfast near Ebenezer Baptist Church every Saturday.
“I just reached out to them and asked if I could, if we could, come down and pass them out alongside them,” Cunningham said.
Week after week, the women do just that, providing clothes, toiletries, sleeping bags and even laundry detergent to those in need.
“We’re not making money off of this, we’re not selling it,” Cunningham said. “We’re literally just taking what we receive and we’re giving it to somebody else that might need it.”
Cunningham told Channel 2 Action News that the real goal is to one day shut down the nonprofit because there is no longer a need.
“There wasn’t anybody in line to need hygiene items or need a pair of pants or need a fresh pair of underwear?” Cunningham said. “That’d be amazing.”
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