Make It Work and the Story Pillow Program – Employment Pathways Through Social Enterprise

To launch the pilot phase of Make It Work, we are holding a 4-week workshop creating one-of-a-kind throw pillows using upcycled fabric donated to the Los Angeles Mission. The foundation of the program is storytelling – sharing our own stories and the witnessing the stories of others. From here we free draw and create shapes and patterns which we transfer onto material, creating “story tiles” which are then sewn into a pillow. Creating useful objects from past stories and traumas helps us reframe how trauma can be utilized to rewrite our present and future stories. These pillows will be sold through our first vendor partnership with the Conrad Hotel in DTLA!

Our current plan is to build more vendor relationships with businesses in DTLA and continue Story Pillows workshops while we launch the Make It Work training program for women who want to enter apparel manufacturing as a career path.

Make it Work is an employment pathways program designed by WUNZ Apparel in Action founder Genevieve Anderson and Give and Take Co. founder Vanessa Watson in conjunction with the Los Angeles Mission. The Make It Work Pilot Program will be an 8-week program teaching 6-8 individuals the basics of cutting and sewing a simple tote bag. The training environment will also be a place to gather and share meals and stories. Community-building is at the core of our program, as positive, production environments are critical to ensuring the long-term success of students coming out of recovery. Our aim is to scale the program into the Mission’s first social enterprise, generating jobs, resources, and new opportunities for LA’s unhoused population.

Genevieve Anderson (WUNZ Apperal In Action) and Vanessa Watson (Two Good Co.)

Participants of the program are women coming through the Anne Douglas Center for Women's Life Recovery Program. These women have undergone a year of spiritual, physical, and social recovery and are ready to re-enter mainstream society. By designing and making useful, beautiful, sustainable products we not only provide training in marketable skills, but most importantly provide a safe space for participants to find the confidence and feelings of self-worth that so many have lost.

Founded in 1936, the Los Angeles Mission is a non-profit, privately supported, faith-based organization that serves the immediate and long-term needs of homeless and disadvantaged men, women and children. The Mission is among the nation’s largest service providers to the homeless.

Left to Right: Sewing Instructor Christina Borreaz in her DTLA Studio, LeNeisha Revels and Genevieve Anderson at the Los Angeles Mission, and Genevieve Anderson with a sewing mannequin.

It's estimated that on any given night, 69,000 people have nowhere safe to call home and are living as best they can on the streets of Los Angeles. They are generally in poor health, are losing hope and their sense of self-worth. They are disconnected from their communities and from society at large.

Our humanity is intertwined, and it is our responsibility to take care of one another. We need renewed community commitment to solve this problem as a unified front. We need new ideas, new empathy, new plans of action to build better, safer and more productive communities.

Make It Work powered by the Los Angeles Mission is such a plan. Together we are building on the powerful community LAM has built over the past 87 years, expanding the scope of impact in the lives of the people the Mission serves. Together we will Make It Work, and change the course of people's lives to build a stronger, inclusive, healthier Los Angeles.