Coloradans recovering from homelessness find community through gardening, crafts program

The products and plants produced by participants are sold in EarthLinks’ storefront, with profits supporting the program. 
Photo: Carly Rose, Rocky Mountain PBS 

Participants cut up cans and license plates and turn them into earrings. They glue flowers and herbs to cardstock to create greeting cards, plant seeds in the soil and tend to beehives and worms. The workshop activities are meant to be restorative and healing for them, Reszka said. 

“We learned how to make all this stuff you see in [the shop]: the bookmarks, the cards, the candles,” Dillard said. “Everything is done with a lot of love and care, and the participants, they love learning how to do new things.” 

They’re given an hourly $8 stipend for their time, which Reszka said sometimes just covers the cost of transportation to get to the garden. 

People who receive Social Security benefits need to report their monthly wages and any changes in their income, after which their eligibility may be re-evaluated. Reszka said the workshop’s small payment amount and calling it a “stipend” is specifically designed to make sure participants don’t lose their Social Security benefits. 

Several of the participants struggle to maintain other work due to disabilities. If someone is deemed able to engage in substantial gainful activity, they may lose their disability benefits. The workshop’s stipend is well below the profit threshold that would disqualify someone from those benefits. 

“What we offer is a place where you can come in and work a few hours a week, be around people that don't judge you, be around a place that feels physically and psychologically and even spiritually safe,” Reszka said. “It restores a sense of self-worth and eventually self-confidence again. They begin to slowly have a network of friends, and then imagine a new future for themselves.” 

Almost two decades after first stepping through EarthLinks’ doors, Dillard, known as Miss Louise to her friends, remains entrenched in the community and now serves on its board of directors.  

Dillard attends the workshop every Thursday morning. She said she doesn’t go out into the garden as much, and she stays away from working on the earrings because the metal pieces are too small. But she loves to create art, so she enjoys working on the greeting cards. 

With much of the garden dormant in the cold weather, participants work on creative indoor projects, such as gluing flowers down to decorate greeting cards. 
Photo: Carly Rose, Rocky Mountain PBS 

Once participants commit to attending workshop, they have access to the support groups and classes also held on campus. Dillard credits the art classes she took with EarthLinks with helping her discover her passion for drawing. She often draws animals and nature scenes. 

For her, drawing is therapeutic, and it’s been a tool for her as she’s dealt with difficult emotions, including the recent loss of her daughter to cancer. 

“The other day, I took the time out to sit down and try to write my daughter's obituary. I'm just trying to put stuff on paper, and I guess the Lord just kind of led me to picking up my pencil and start drawing again,” Dillard said.  

“I had not did that in quite a while, so that was really good for me,” she said. 

Reszka said EarthLinks serves a mostly older population, offering a solution to only one niche of those experiencing homelessness. The organization doesn't have the resources to serve families in similar situations.  

But with so many kinds of homelessness to tackle, Reszka – who's worked in case management for decades – believes multifaceted solutions that address specific groups are more effective.  

“There's hundreds of folks who are older and don't have a support system who fall into this homelessness, and there are a lot of them just living very much in fear,” Reszka said. “We realized that we're a little oasis for those folks and to some degree they can find a safe niche in a world that's really changing fast.” 

Through her years in the community, Dillard has seen how this model of continued support – past the point of finding housing – impacts and changes people as they emerge from homelessness. 

“They have been through their traumas and their trials,” Dillard said. “We're blessed to be able to have been here for them, for each other. We're here for each other. And that means a lot.” 

Carly Rose is the journalism intern at Rocky Mountain PBS and can be reached at carlyrose@rmpbs.org.